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DANTZIG & POLAND
BY
SIMON ASKENAZY
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL POLISH
BY
WILLIAM J. ROSE
E
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“IBN
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GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1
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PREFATORY NOTE
Tuts book appeared in Polish at the beginning of I9I9Q,
and later on in French and German. Its reminiscences
of Dantzig’s past were intended to foreshadow the future
of the city in a restored Union with the restored Polish
Republic. Only such a solution could have given satis-
faction to the interests of Dantzig, Poland and Europe,
and, quite certainly, to those of the old friend of both
Dantzig and pland—Great Britain. Things, however,
have turned differently. Instead of being reunited
to Poland, Dantes has been kept apart from her, and
even to a certain extent has been put into an attitude of
opposition. Such a solution is against the interests of
Dantzig, Poland and Europe. It is, in truth, equally at
variance with the real interests of Great Britain herself,
although Great Britain was not irresponsible for its
materialization. An English edition of this work, there-
fore, may seem only the more seasonable, as it may foster
reflection and help to repair the mistakes which have been
committed.
ASKENAZY.
GENEVA, First ASSEMBLY OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS,
December, 1920.
R4AGn4 7
CONTENTS
I
PAGE
THE HEEL OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER ‘ : . Pah:
II
UNDER THE POLISH THRONE , ; i 4 i
III
THE DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC . ; 4 ; . 24
IV
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION . ‘ ; ; j . 32
Vv
A FREE CITY. ‘ : F : ; ; ; : 58
VI
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 7 7 a
NOTES ; ; 3 ; : J y ° - 103
DANTZIG AND POLAND
I
THE HEEL OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER
DurRING the very first period of its existence and growth,
Dantzig passed through widely diverse experiences and
severe historical trials From being at the start a coastal
colony, this native old-Slavic fisher-folk developed with an
inevitable admixture of Polish blood. Good relations
were maintained with Poland under the rule of her first
dynasty, the Piasts; and it is evident that for a time -
at the end of the tenth century the city was under the
direct influence of one of Poland’s most illustrious kings,
Boleslaw the Great, uncle of Canute of England.2 In 1148,
by a Bull of Eugene III, it was placed under the spiritual
guardianship of a Polish bishop, being assigned to the
diocese of Wloclawek, where it remained for several centuries.3
Under the rule of the Slav princes of Pomerania, Dantzig
grew and was transformed step by step—thanks partly to
the introduction of industrious German colonists during
the thirteenth century. When at the close of this century
the line of these princes died out, the city welcomed the
Polish King, Wladislaw Lokietek, as its lawful lord, and
that with rapturous homage. Thrice did it entertain him,
1298-99, 1306, when he came to lay his hand on Pomerania
and put an end to the dissensions that were tormenting
the country.4 —
From time immemorial this busy and enterprising town,
developed from a fishing-village, did business with Poland
and gained from the Polish lands its livelihood. And in
those far-away savage times it found among the Polish
lords and chieftains worthy customers as buyers and sellers,
7
8 -_ * DANTZIG. AND POLAND
men ‘whe were at’ oncé ‘scrupulous and reliable. It found,
too, “just and ready protection, which guarded carefully
the interests of foreign merchants.’”’ Thus much a modern
Prussian historian, who was no friend of Poland, has had
to affirm: and that on the evidence of the oldest aldermanic
records of the city.5
Scarcely, however, did the city begin to flourish, when,
early in the fourteenth century, the mailed fist of the Teutonic
Order fell upon her people. The ravenous brothers of this
Order, with the white cross on their black mantles, were
hardly settled on the right bank of the Vistula when they
prepared to cross to the other and, by doing so, to get
hold of the key to river, coast, and country—the city of
Dantzig. At the ifvitation of the credulous inhabitants
themselves, the deceitful, merciless, and greedy Knights
first settled themselves in the castle, and then at once
provoked a deliberate quarrel. The city was taken on
a dark November night (1308) by a sudden murderous
attack. Part of the people were slain, the survivors driven
out. The peaceful habitations were destroyed and levelled
to the earth. Nothing but desert and ruins was left.®
In the whole conception of this assault, an extraordinary
one even for those times, and apart from the ostensible
plan of execution with its treachery and violence, there
are two significant politico-psychic traits which deeply impress
us: terrorism and hypocrisy. Chill terrorism, as a conscious
means of conquest, made its appearance. The Order in-
tended, as Dlugosz, the ancient chronicler, put it, “ that
the far-sounding echo of this cruelty should so affright the
hearts of men in other towns and fortresses, that no one
would dare to oppose it, and so that the task of further
occupations would be easier and safer.” Again, as a further
political instrument, we have here bottomless hypocrisy,
and the gratuitous denial of perpetrated crime. The Head
of the Order had the courage later, in a letter of self-defence
to the Pope, to call the whole villainy committed upon
Dantzig an act of summary justice. He mentioned the
killing of some dozen or more “‘robbers’’ (latvones). What
is more, he dared to assure the Pope that “ the people of
the city, of their own free will (propria voluntate), laid waste
their homes, and settled in another place.”
ie
THE HEEL OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER 9
It is very significant that, right to our own day,
this fearful tragedy of Dantzig was either presented as
doubtful by the Prussian historians or else only mentioned
as of no importance; it was even set in‘a specially pro-
pitious light. A modern Prussian professor of history,
even though he questions the number of victims given as
ten thousand by the sources, cannot deny the fact of a
cruel slaughter, to which fell victims, as he puts it generally,
“a certain number of Polish knights, many citizens, and
a host of other people.”
The latest historian of the fortress of Dantzig, a Prussian
General, writing for the jubilee of the possession of the
fortress by Prussia, admits freely and with the greatest
frankness the work of destruction done by the Order, both
explaining it as a military expert and justifying it as a
politician.7
“In the action of the Order with regard to Dantzig
and Tczew (Dirschau) we have the usual Mongolian method
of warfare. Dzhengis Khan did the same sort of thing
on a larger scale . . . when he had not enough troops to
allow him to garrison larger cities. In view of the slender
armies at its disposal, the Order could not help itself in any
other fashion.”
This sort of reasoning need not, of course, surprise us
in the work of a modern learned specialist, who is a Prussian
Major-General, especially when we recall the fact that
the work was published on the anniversary of the seizure
of Dantzig by Prussia, and dedicated on the title-page to
Wilhelm II. As a matter of fact, that chivalrous and
eloquent monarch is notorious for having openly become
the apologist and restorer of the too long neglected tactics
of the ancient “‘ Huns,” and that for the profit of the modern
art of war.
The conquest of Dantzig was an event of the first im-
portance for the further development of the Order. In
the very next year (1309) the Grand-Master, who had hitherto
had his seat in far-away Venice, declared the time to be
right for transferring his final residence to Marienburg.
Thus, Dantzig found itself involved in permanent slavery
to that citadel of the Order. The native Kashubian-Polish
population suffered most from the fearful visitation which
10 DANTZIG AND POLAND
harassed it. Driven into the surrounding marshes, forced
steadily into an ever lower industrial and social state, it
was impoverished, Germanized, trodden down: and yet
throughout it refused to be stamped out, but became per-
- meated with an easily understood hatred of its Crusader
oppressors.
In the same way, the neighbouring German colonists,
although supported by the Order and indispensable for its
future success, repaid the selfish favour granted them, united
as it was with ruthless exploitation and open disdain, with
feelings of hate, a hate that was deep and secret. For
nearly a century and a half Dantzig had to hold out under
the harsh rule of the Order, under the Teutonic sword.
It goes without saying that it was deeply harmed, and was
checked in the course of a healthy industrial development—
this purely commercial town in the midst of the purely
military organization of the Crusader State.
In the economy of things, the city really remained,
through this almost fatal period, thanks to its exceptionally
fortunate geographical position, an important centre of
commerce in Europe, welcoming at its docks a couple of
hundred British merchantmen, reckoning its turnover by
millions, and winning its way to the headship of all Prussian
cities. Yet this natural growth of the city’s well-being
was sensibly retarded and checked by the harsh and ex-
ceedingly covetous hand of the Order. For the latter was
as greedy of riches as of power, and oppressed people for
the sake of gain. Thus it was not content with grasping
Dantzig in its iron hand, nor yet with levying high dues
on its trade: but as a finishing stroke the Order itself
organized trade, and that on an ever-increasing scale. It
thus became no more a protector, but both an oppressor
and in addition a rival of Dantzig: an intolerable one, too,
because of its hegemony, which gave it special privileges.®
| No wonder, then, that under such circumstances the after-
| math of the great victory of Poland over the Order won by
| Wladislaw Jagiellon at Tannenberg was welcomed with joy
in Dantzig, as a blessed earnest of emancipation from the
' Teutonic yoke. True, the people of the city had to provide
their masters with a division of levies for the battle of
Tannenberg. But there was no more rejoicing in Poland
THE HEEL OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER 11
itself because of that triumph than in Dantzig. When,
after the disaster, part of the surviving Knights began to
seek shelter in the city, “‘ the folk became furious.” They
at once rang the bells, fell upon the hated guests, and beat
them up, killing some and driving the rest from the city.9
Further, the mayor and burghers at once hastened to appear
in the camp of the victor, Wladislaw Jagiellon, for service
(1410) : an act too gallantly conceived, for it exposed them to
the mortal vengeance of the Order, still armed to the teeth.
ey were kindly received, and their city was guaranteed
great and liberal privileges. But the result was unlucky,
for they had hastened to do homage to the Polish King
when the time was not yet ripe.t
The terrible vengeance of the Order awaited them on
their return. It is well known that the bloody Count Plauen,
brother of the Grand-Master, who was in possession of the
castle of Dantzig, invited to his friendly roof-tree those
imprudent mayors, Konrad Letczkow, Arnold Hecht, and
the alderman Bartholomew Gross; that he murdered them
without compassion, and then returned their corpses to the
terrified city after keeping them a week (1411). The ancient
chronicler tells well how the citizens, smitten with fear,
stood silent before the disdainful Commander; and only
one, the wretched mayoress Anne Gross, broke out in des-
perate reproofs :
“If you were a man, as you are a woman,” the angry Commander
said, “‘I should do with you as I have with your spouse and your
sire.”
“If I were a man, as I am a woman,” was the reply, “‘ and I could
meet you face to face on the field, sir Commander, I should avenge
them both on you with this arm of mine.”
After which, she lifted up her voice, greatly wailing,
says the chronicler. ‘‘I lay complaint before God in the
high heaven for this frightful brutality and injustice which
has come upon me, a wretched woman, and upon my
children, against God and righteousness. I and my orphan
children have lost father, husband, home and privileges,
without any guilt on our part, without any verdict given.
Do Thou, Almighty God, have pity and send the fitting
punishment for such a mighty wrong.” *
12 DANTZIG AND POLAND
At last punishment and satisfaction came. When the
Prussian Estates seeking the protection of Poland declared
war on the Order, the people of Dantzig appeared at once
in the van, remembering in their hearts so many injuries
inflicted. As no others could have done, they set themselves
to compass the ruin and end of the Order. In a twinkling
they took their hated Teutonic castle (1454). They did
not leave one stone on another. They razed to the ground
that nest of beasts of prey, just as their city had been razed
aforetime. In the Thirteen Years War between Poland
and the Order they grudged neither blood nor money, if
only they might help the Polish King utterly to wipe out
the might of the Crusaders. Tireless in their voluntary
service, which meant help to Poland and satisfaction and
deliverance for themselves, they were most active to the
very end. :
They played a gallant part in the taking of Marienburg:
witness the picture preserved even to-day in the Artushof
in Dantzig, and the ancient rhyme underneath. Together
with the Polish knighthood they scattered at Puck the last
‘hosts of the Order. They kept during the struggle 15,000
at their own cost. They spent on the war nearly half a
million florins, which means according to our values over
30,000,000 Polish guilders.
When for the first time the victorious Polish King
Casimir Jagiellon came to Dantzig (1457), the city, delivered
from the Order, not only welcomed him in triumph,
but it made him a considerable contribution, greatly em-
barrassed as he was for lack of funds, to the immediate costs
of the war: an essential contribution if the remaining strong-
holds of the Order were to be taken. From all sides the
men of the city brought gold and silver to the King; and
even the fair matrons came with their jewels. The King
was touched, and is said to have assured them “ that they
shall have a royal reward.” It was a handsome and kingly
recompense they got for loyal, unstinted, and manly service,
as the learned scribe and historian of the city averred with
just pride. From the hand of the grateful Casimir they
received at once the two chief statutes of the city for its
incorporation (Privilegia Casimiriana 1454, 1457).%
On the strength of these two statutes, supplemented
THE HEEL OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER § 18
later on, they obtained far-reaching internal autonomy
and generous trade rights, some of the guarantees being
almost sovereign in their character. They obtained the
right to enact and execute their own laws, the right to coin
money, the right to treat with foreign powers, a crown in
their coat of arms, and the red wax in the mayor’s seal.
They were given considerable increase of lands for the city
and suburbs. The basin of Dantzig, with the peninsula
Nehring, was given to them, as well as the heights above
the town. They were further granted the site of the castle
of the Order, a reduction of two-thirds in their dues, and
the right of taxes on the mills. They could maintain a
fortress, open and close at will the port of the Vistula, control
completely the bay, which meant, however, the reservation
for the Polish State of the sovereignty of the sea.3
In a word, apart from their new relation to Poland,
they gained the invaluable rights of a free city, and certain
guarantees for a splendid development in the future.
II
UNDER THE POLISH THRONE
Now at last, after a century and a half of bondage to the
Order, the people of Dantzig entered into a period of freedom
and growth, lasting nearly three hundred and fifty years,
under the Polish sceptre. This happy union with Poland
was finally consummated in the Treaty of Torun (1466).
Once more Casimir Jagiellon was heartily welcomed in
the city, both as the conqueror of the Order and the
benefactor of Dantzig. From him the city received the
supreme dignity of ‘‘ Admiral of Poland,” and full privileges
of free shipping. The banner of Dantzig, two white crosses
covered by the Polish crown, on a red background, waved
from this time on the Baltic, and right away to the western
and southern seas. In a trice the number of vessels calling
at the port was doubled and trebled.
The city’s trade with Holland speedily increased. It
reached as far as Portugal, Spain, and even to Turkey.
Especially did it increase with France and England. The
English had known Dantzig from the oldest days, and
afterwards under the Crusaders had been invited by the
Order, together with the French, to help in expeditions
against the ‘‘Saracens” of the north, the Lithuanians
and the Poles. Even at the end of the fourteenth century
such noblemen as the Earl of Derby, afterwards King
Henry IV, and Marshal Boucicaut passed through Dantzig,
on these expeditions, in the best of good faith and inno-
cence. Their task was represented to them as a wholly
pious one, although it was in reality a pillaging expedition
of the Order. All this ended with Tannenberg.™4
From this time purely peaceful trade relations became
fixed between Dantzig as the port of Poland, and London,
14
UNDER THE POLISH THRONE 15
Hull, Nottingham, and other English sea-ports and industrial
centres ; while they kept developing in the most successful
manner. Through the city the products of English industry
found their way into Poland, chiefly drapers’ wares. To
England went grain, flour, oak and pine timber, which latter
came to be used almost exclusively by the English fleet.
Similarly the trade of Dantzig with France grew markedly
at the end of the fifteenth century, especially during the wars
of Karl V with Francis I, when the Hanseatic towns had to
abandon their French trade. Dantzig was not slow to
profit by this development. In the city the chief articles
of trade were wines, oils, and French silks, which were
exported in return for grain, timber, and Polish cloths.
Amid such conditions Dantzig’s trade returns grew
more and more imposing. The yearly export of grain
alone soon reached 60,000 “ lasts” (a measure of 2-24 tons
weight), to the value of 20,000,000 thalers. Only Amster-
dam could compare with Dantzig at that time as an em-
porium of world-wide trade in corn. A modern historian
of commerce, wishing to define the ancient position of these
two cities, has assigned them a réle corresponding to that of
London and New York in our time.
“Tf, then, these Dantzig people get on so well with us,”
wrote a member of the Polish nobility with justice, ‘“ and
get rich, thanks to our commercial dealings, they would be
unnatural fools to think of changing their overlord.” 15
But they had no such thought. Their connexion with
Poland, the natural mother and nurse of their native-city,
brought them endless gain, not only as merchants in the
way of trade, but as citizens in the way of dignity. They
were indeed subjects of the Polish King, but they were also
his electors. Their delegates, “the lords from Dantzig,”
took part in the Diet which elected Sigmund I and sat by
the side of the bishops, palatins, and castellans of the
Kingdom of Poland.*
Of a surety all this did not happen, nor could it, with-
out involving sharp and even bloody differences. The
religious and social unrest in the city, which came early in
the fifteenth century with the opening of the Reformation
era, led to a fateful explanation with the King.
“We have thought it more in keeping with our Grace,”
16 DANTZIG AND POLAND
replied Sigmund I to the now penitent men of Dantzig,
“to deal with you rather in the manner of a physician who
supplies remedies than as those who exact vengeance for so
many transgressions.” As a matter of fact, the Statute of
Sigmund I (1526) set limits to the caprice of the City Council,
as Supreme Committee (Ovdnung), establishing on a firm
footing, a Second Committee, that of Aldermen, and still
more, adding a Third Committee, to the already set number
of a hundred representatives. These reflected in outspoken
manner, even though they were nominated by the Council,
the general and settled will of the people. Thus the Statute,
securing a more democratic order of administration and
public safety, in the long run redounded only to the good
of the city.?7
A little later, with the growth of the Reformation in
Dantzig, the religious Statute of King Sigmund Augustus
(1557) tactfully regulated the troublesome question of creeds
—in a temporary fashion it is true, but as practically and
satisfactorily as was possible. And the last of the Jagiellons
was likewise able to break the opposition of the city to a
real union with Poland (1569-70), along quiet and peaceful
lines. It was all done without bloodshed, but with unbending
decision of purpose.'®
At that very time, in the course of the last disagreement,
the wisdom of the Statute of Sigmund I was revealed. The
significant fact came out, and was noticeable until the end -
of the Polish authority, that the Polish regime had won for
itself by its kindness and beneficence solid support, both
moral and political, in the township of Dantzig, even in the
teeth of the City Council. It happened that a slender
group of the patricians of the First Senatorial Committee
was ready at times to make trouble for the Polish govern-
ment. But the broad masses of the population represented
in the Third Committee, while nominated by the Council,
constituted the proper representation of the four quarters
of the city. They were made up of the four great guilds,
the butchers, the shoemakers, the smiths, and the bakers,
sand they naturally gravitated beneath the high guardian-
ship of the Polish King, thus presenting an ever-increasing
antidote to every separatist tendency of the Council.
It was clear that this citizen-class, merchants, apprentices,
UNDER THE POLISH THRONE 17
and factory-workers, who had the largest share of ancient
Kashubian-Polish blood in their veins—above all, the petty
traders, artisans, the fishermen, the simple folk drawing
their livelihood from the port, the river, and the sea—these
all not only felt bound by a personal union to their King,
but they also regarded themselves as united with the Polish
Republic by ties that were material and real.
Once, and once only, was Dantzig to enter on a bitter
conflict with the whole Republic, and that with King Stephen
Batory, whose election they had not confirmed (1577).
The city defended itself stubbornly, but finally surrendered
without disgracing itself, without any regrets, but with
honour and complete loyalty. For this it received, not
punishment, nor yet vengeance in the fashion of the Teutonic
Knights, but the confirmation of all its privileges, and
even fresh and precious evidences of favour at the hands
of the victor, King Stephen.19
From this time onwards the splendid progress of the
gallant and industrious city continued at an accelerated pace.
Never again did it lend ear to the deceitful whisperings of
strangers, whether Hanseatic or Brandenburg, against Poland.
It did not allow them to divert it from the path of natural
development, prescribed for it by this political and com-
mercial union with Poland. From year to year Dantzig
grew and became more opulent, especially towards the end
of the sixteenth century.
Men began to observe that it was getting too rich. The
famous Latin poet and diplomat of Poland, Jan Dantiscus,
native of Dantzig and Bishop of Warmia, favourite too
of Sigmund the Elder, prophesied in stern verses the fall
of his native city, as a result of her exaggerated prosperity.
The poet Klonowicz, floating down with his wooden raft
to Dantzig (or rather, as he said, to “ Chlanzic ’’—city of
gluttons), thundered against the greedy city, \which
encouraged by its trade covetousness, extravagance, and
moral depravity.?° 2%
But these plaints and homilies of moralists could not
hide the enormously active part which Dantzig, as a powerful
and indispensable “‘ wind-pipe,” played in the political
_ and commercial organization of the Republic. To every
criticism of the poet the best answer was the dry record
2 9
18 DANTZIG AND POLAND
of the steadily growing import trade and still more the
export trade of the city. On the eve of the Thirty Years
War the export of grain from Dantzig reached close upon
I20,000 measures, which means civca 10,000,000 bushels
yearly—an enormous figure for those days.??
Happily united with Poland, and that in its own well-
understood interest, the city achieved a full and natural
measure of well-being and splendour. It recovered its
proper character, for which nature destined it: becoming
the distributor of the natural resources of the broad and
fertile land of Poland, her fields, her forests, her prairies,
her corn, her timber, her cattle ; and, on the other hand, the
provider of the produce of the tropics as well as of all that
foreign factories supplied. She was the link and the medium
connecting the agricultural life of Poland with the manu-
facturing world of the West.
The Republic did not grudge the city new privileges
which would specially guarantee her prosperous indus-
trial position. There came in free “corn, flour, products
of the forest, and all else necessary for the upkeep of the
nobleman’s own home.” There came oxen for draught
and for slaughter, there came oaks for masts for Holland
and England. Simultaneously, too, the city was given
the precious monopoly of ‘“‘stamping’’: the exclusive
right to admit through the one port English, Flemish, and
other foreign goods and to stamp them, “under peril of
confiscation of their goods, if any dare to admit or import
cloths by another way or without the stamp of Dantzig.”
It is thus small wonder that the city which aforetime,
suffering losses and wrongs, had torn itself free from the
exploitation of the Order, but which now, under changed
conditions, was enjoying comfort and liberty, should bind
itself daily more firmly to the Republic which brought it
wealth and shelter.
In truth, the worthy men of Dantzig did not cease from
that time onwards to give the fairest proofs of this fruitful and
unshakeable connexion with Poland. Still earlier they had
sent voluntary assistance time after time to the Poland of the
Jagiellons in her military distress. As already recorded, they
helped King Casimir Jagiellon of their own free will in his
bitter need. In the same way they offered Sigmund Augustus
UNDER THE POLISH THRONE 19
three casks of gold for his war with Moscow. Likewise
they provided help for Stephen Batory on his Moscow
expedition, in money, heavy guns, and ammunition. Again,
during the hard experiences of the seventeenth century,
they stood by the Republic, weapon in hand, in the face of
a foreign invasion of Polish domains. Accordingly, when
blockaded in the first Swedish War (1626-29) by the grim
might of Gustavus Adolphus, the people of Dantzig did
not let themselves be carried away by the fair words of
the great champion of Protestantism. Deaf alike to his
temptings and to his threats, they held the field against
him, and inflicted on him a serious defeat. In the issue
they even made fun of the baffled Swedish tempter and
“ terrorizer,”’ in mocking verses addressed to him. Thus
keeping their word of good-faith sworn to the Republic,
they earned words of high praise and thanks from King
Sigmund. In three consecutive “ proclamations’”’ of the
Diet (1627, 1628, 1629) deserved praise was awarded in the
name of the Republic for the unbroken loyalty of Dantzig
toward the Polish Crown.?3 24
Again, during the Great Northern War, the gallant
city.did not hesitate a moment in face of the siege-craft
of the Swedish King, Carolus Gustavus. During the whole
period (1655-60), one marked by the most cruel transi-
tions and the most lamentable desertions in the history
of Poland, Dantzig alone stood like an island amid the
flood. We have here one of the fairest pages of Dantzig’s
history. The cautious citizens set their own suburbs on fire,
burned their own prosperous farms and suburban villas, if
only to hinder the Swedes from settling there. Then, full of
daring, though surrounded by the foe, they made his ears
tingle with salutes of their cannon and muskets on’ the
walls and in the market-place, when they heard the first
glad news of the return of their true monarch, Jan Casimir.
It was then that the simple townsfolk, with sober
deference but with wise dignity, returned to Carolus Gustavus,
who was storming the entrance to the port (Weichselmuende)
at the time, and who kept urging them persistently to give
themselves up to his “ kindly care,” as he was a fellow-
Protestant, not only a definite refusal, but also a stern
and splendid remonstrance,
20 DANTZIG AND POLAND
“From the moment when Dantzig became subject and
loyal to the King of Poland, the city has always held in
due honour the Swedish sovereigns. ... But alas, the
sad news has come that the most gracious King to whom
it had sworn fealty, has been fallen upon by King Carolus,
that Swedish troops are plundering Poland, and that many
lands, cities and strongholds have been laid waste... .
The city has great respect for His Majesty the Swedish King,
and does not wish to inquire and dispute as to whether
he has rightly made war on Poland or not. That only the
Most High, who dwells above, and is our judge, can decide.
Yet, no doubt, He recognizes that no one on earth can
affirm that the Swedes have a just ground for making
war. The citizens know well what advantages will flow to
them from reigning sovereigns, and especially from the favour
of His Majesty, Carolus Gustavus ; but their loyalty to their
most gracious King will not permit them to accept his terms.
Their King has been given them by God, and through a
free election. He is their lawful Lord, whom they have
bound themselves by an oath to serve.
“ This loyalty they have kept unbroken for two centuries,
from the time when they were incorporated in the Re-
public of Poland. If they have fallen on an evil day for
the time being, it is because they have gone the right path
their fathers went, and willed to have a clear conscience
before God and a good reputation among men of unbiased
judgment. These are the reasons why they have resorted to
arms. If His Majesty the Swedish King appreciates these
reasons, they have no doubt that he will exonerate them.
Let him not forget that he too is of the Protestant faith,
and let him not permit them to be hindered in the performance
of what the teaching of the New Testament enjoins upon
all Christians. . .
‘Let him also bear in mind that the blow which has fallen
upon Jan Casimir, in every way a very gracious and kindly
Lord, as well as upon his kingdom and domains, may also
at some future day fall upon Carolus Gustavus himself.
And if in that event his senators, or subjects, or some city,
shall stand by its rightful Lord with unwavering firmness,
being led astray neither by bribes nor deceit, nay,
though it should take up an even more hostile attitude
UNDER THE POLISH THRONE 21
than at present Dantzig is taking, could the King deny that
such valour would be praiseworthy in subjects and honourable
even in foes? For the rest, relying wholly on the Providence
of God, the Commoners, Aldermen, and Council of Hundred,
and the Three Estates of the City of Dantzig, except in so
far as their duties towards Poland are concerned, remain
the most obedient servants of His Majesty the King of
Sweden.”’
Once more on the morrow a Protestant divine, sent
from the Swedish camp, renewed the temptation, appealing
directly to their business interests, as being the first and
chiefest ground why they should submit. Forthwith, deeply
annoyed, the Commoners enlightened the delegate-bishop
in regard to “the customs and principles on which the
city has governed itself for ages,” with these prudent and
beautiful words:
“Our fathers were attached above everything, to the
Gospel of Christ. After this, their next attachment was
to their Kings, as being those whom God Himself set in
authority over them. In the third place, they were careful
not to sever themselves from the Polish Kingdom, with
which they were incorporated. Fourthly, they defended,
while strength lasted, their rights, privileges, freedom, and
customs. Lastly, they applied themselves to the improve-
ment of trade, industry, and their own well-being.
“But these latter duties never took precedence over
the former. Profit and business never stood before truth
and goodness. No man, surely, will believe that God is
pleased when people break the faith due to their King in order
to further the cause of religion. The inborn understanding
of the people of Dantzig, weak as it is, teaches them that
nothing so impresses religion on the heart, or establishes
it more securely in the life than simplicity of spirit and that
peace for which all hearts and tongues should pray to Jesus
Christ.”
And they carried their point, at the cost of great exertions,
of good citizen blood, of huge losses in buildings and trade,
as well as of four and a half million Polish guilders in cash,
given as a war contribution to the Republic. They awaited
the solemn approach of Jan Casimir to set their city free (1656).
In the speech of welcome to the Syndicus of Dantzig Fabricius,
22 DANTZIG AND POLAND >
they heard the high declaration from the lips of the Lord
High Chancellor of Poland, that ‘‘ by this city alone, in spite
of the superior might, tyranny, and deceit of a cruel foe,
the whole Republic has been conserved.”’ They heard from
the lips of the King and many Polish senators in the following
Diets (1659, 1661) repeated and warm recommendations of
worthy rewards for Dantzig from the Republic, in order
“to rejoice her,’”’ and “the better to rouse the city to
maintaining itself in such obedience, thus deeply rooted
for all time.’’ 25 26
During the next reign Dantzig was privileged to welcome
in its midst for the longer space of some seven months
the great King Jan Sobieski (1677-78). In addition to
the numerous matters of finance and politics bound up
with this longish royal visit, there arose also the matter of
arranging the internal affairs of the city. Here again, as
before so often, the common people turned for protection
to its Polish King, as against its own oligarchic council.
“Deputations of the guilds of Dantzig, especially of the
shoemakers and the butchers, literally besieged Sobieski
with complaints against the Council.” The shoemaker
George Meyer, leader of one of these deputations, told the
King straight that ‘‘he would accomplish and realize more
in Dantzig with the help of the guilds than Batory with
the sword.” ,
“God in heaven!” exclaimed Sobieski, moved by the
attachment shown towards him by this worthy Dantzic
shoemaker, ‘‘ the man is a plain fellow, and yet with what
eloquence does he speak, and address himself to me.”
The King then granted the request of the guilds, and
heard their complaints about the abuses of the City Council
in the matter of the election and vote of the Third Committee.
At the same time he considered in detail the wants of the
Catholic elements in the guilds’ associations of the city,
which were especially devoted to him and the Republic.
Finally, by his decree (Decretum Joannis III, 1678) the
powers of the Third Committee were extended, and a definite
number of artisans were included; and this was all carried
out in the same democratic spirit which the royal Polish
authority steadily kept in view throughout the whole of
the stay in Dantzig.?7
~
UNDER THE POLISH THRONE 28
When at length, after many years, the men of Dantzig
met for the last time the might of the Swedish Charles XII,
the conflict took place amid virtually new conditions. For the
rest, though they supported King Stanislaw Leszczynski at
his first election (1705), they did not make serious trouble
for August II] the moment he was made rightful lord by
the whole Polish nation. It then happened that, during
the new war in the north, the people of Dantzig had twice
to welcome the new ruler of the East, Peter the Great (1716,
1717). He was received in the Council-hall with the brilliance
worthy of a crowned head. His speech, made in the Polish
tongue, was listened to with fitting respect. They could
not, indeed, keep the common people from less favourable
manifestations. The Czar, with his numerous attendants,
drank much, took great liberties, and brought much expense
on the city, as the native historian recorded with a sigh.?8
It was the first time that the covetous eyes of a Czar
rested on Dantzig. Even then the City Council had to
be .on the watch against the espionage of his attendants,
and even against a sudden armed attack. From this time
the idea of reaching out after the wealthy Polish-German
city became a part of Russian politics. It rose to the
surface time after time later on, under Czarina Elizabeth,
and again under Czar Alexander.
Iil
THE DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC
AT the great election contest of Poland, which followed
closely after, the men of Dantzig had an opportunity of
affording striking proof that they were truly at one with
the national temper of the Republic, not only in material
but also in moral affairs.
The occasion was that of the second election of Stanislaw
Leszczynski (1733). The unhappy Stanislaw “‘I and Il”
was scarcely elected when he was driven out of Warsaw
by the election of August III, carried out with the help of
Russian arms. Forsaken by fortune and his supporters,
he took refuge from pursuit behind the walls of Dantzig.
The city had no obligations towards him. It had nothing
to gain by welcoming an exile king, without authority, or
troops, or even funds. Moreover, it could not doubt the
necessity of thus assuming responsibility for his desperate
cause, which was from the start hopelessly lost. All this
meant risking serious conflicts, no small losses, and a
dangerous and hopeless trial of arms.
But Leszczynski had all the same the weight of public
opinion in Poland behind him. He was the rightly elected
monarch, and thus the rightful sovereign lord of Dantzig.
So the noble councillors of the city, after ripe deliberation,
followed the unanimous decision ,of their citizen-body ;
and, with a loyal feeling of their solidarity and their duty
as subjects, not only did they not refuse the exile hospitality,
but took him in, and made it a point of honour to stand
by him to the last—“‘ to defend to the end the sacred person
of His Majesty the King.”
‘““ Welcome, beloved Sovereign, to the good city of
2
THE DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC 25
Dantzig! It alone has the great joy of seeing its King
with its own eyes in its midst!”
Thus did the ‘‘ Joyful Dantzig ’’ welcome the Polish
King, with the rugged rhyme of a native singer. These
curious and amusing expressions of regard for Stanislaw,
in verse and prose, are worth reading. Much, indeed, was
issued at the time in the same strain by the ancient presses
of the city. Amusing they were, beyond a doubt, with their
pedantry of sentiment and exaggeration. Yet they were
certainly curious, even moving; especially if one recalls
the honest intentions from which they sprang, and the
special environing circumstances, such as the beating of
alarm-bells, the shouting of enemy columns assaulting the
city, the noise of bursting bombs, and the thunder of heavy
guns of the Saxon and Russian besiegers.
In fact, as was to be expected, the city was enveloped
by the iron ring of the Czarina’s troops, in pursuit of the
King. The pressure brought to bear by the famed Russian
Commander-in-Chief, Muennich (1734) became daily severer.
But Dantzig defended itself against the siege-craft of the
Russian Field-Marshal with the same stoutness and stubborn-
ness it had shown against the Swedes. It was fighting for
a cause openly regarded as lost. Cut off from Poland and
the world, it could not really hope for relief. From one
source alone, from France, came valiant help, but in vain.
Louis XV sent it—the son-in-law of the exile Stanislaw.
Once, in the seventeenth century, when hard pressed by the
Swedes, Dantzig had been helped by the Dutch fleet. Now,
still harder pressed by the Russians, it saw for the first time
the war-ships of France approaching, alas! with too weak
succour. Then it was that, under the walls of Dantzig,
French blood was spilt for the first time for Poland, under
the leadership of the gallant young Count Plélo, who was
killed here by a Russian bullet. The debt has since been
paid back a hundred-fold by Polish blood, shed in the
cause of France.
The French attempt at relief failed: but the city, left
to its own resources, did not lose courage, but stoutly with-
stood the superior Russian army. Without distinction of
class or guild, the wealthy patrician leaders at the side of
the simple dock-workers, day and night served with per-
26 DANTZIG AND POLAND
severance, bravery, and watchfulness, manning the guns
and also taking turns at outposts. Even the gallant matrons,
vigorous burgher-women, are said to have tried their hand
at the art of war in this time of stress. ‘‘ Ye womenfolk,
matrons and maidens! Let the foe see your womanly
valour!” Thus did the enthusiastic bard, Stanislaw’s
partisan, challenge the city’s sisters and mothers to the
conflict.
The truth is that the wretched Stanislaw was wearied
by the refractory magnates and noblemen of Poland whom
he had with him in the beleaguered city, and who, having
lost heart altogether, were reproaching him daily for their
common disappointment. He enjoyed infinitely more respect
at the hands of the simple, generous, and loyal citizen body,
which did not cease to honour in his person the sacrosanct
majesty of the Republic. The consequence was that when
the King at length fled from the city in secret, the unexpected
news struck the burghers like a thunderbolt. It roused in
them, not the feeling of relief one would have expected, but
one of sincere regret, and of something like despair.
Then, and only then, when they had no longer anyone
to defend, the city surrendered. They did it with honour,
after four and a half months of siege, after surviving more
than four thousand bombs, at the hands of some fifty
thousand troops led by the ablest general of his time. They
had to send a mission on purpose to St. Petersburg to beg
the Czarina’s pardon in the name of the city. The price
paid was a heavy one: some of the best blood of the
town, widespread ruins in its borders, and a war contribu-
tion amounting to millions. But they proved finely, once
again, by this stout act of fidelity, that they were worthy
citizens of the Polish Republic.9
It was not to be expected that the mutual relations
between the new King August III, the second of the Polish
Saxon dynasty, and the valiant city which had defended
the royal rival stubbornly to the very last, would shape
themselves quite satisfactorily. The fact is therefore the
more noteworthy that, in spite of what had happened, the
people of Dantzig trustingly placed themselves under his
care as if by an age-long instinct. It was once more
the common people of the city, accustomed to the
THE DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC 27
solicitous protection of its Polish King, who supported
this step.
Delegates of the Third Committee turned as of yore
to August for help against the patrician caprice of the
Council. And they actually evoked the new Royal Decree
(Ordinatio Augusti III, 1750), with its democratic temper,
which broke finally with the autocracy and dealt a decisive
blow at the preponderance of the patrician Council. Instead,
it confirmed, defined clearly, and extended the franchise
granted to the common people, so that it worked admirably.
In return the grateful Third Committee, together with the
merchants, set up a magnificent marble statue of the King,
which is still to be seen in the old Artushof.
The wretched Lengnich, then Professor of history and law
in the academy high school of the city, and later Syndicus
of Dantzig, being famous as a jurist and historian, had to
justify in writing the just demands of the Third Committee
at the command of the King himself, although he himself
inclined rather in spirit to the side of the Council of patricians.
He was a learned man, the glory of Dantzig, a member of
the Imperial Russian Academy, and Councillor of the Saxon
Embassy. Both these titles, he tells us himself, ‘‘ I quite
declined to avail myself of after good consideration.” He
was an able and cautious diplomat, called by those who
did not like him “‘ the Prussian Tacitus,” since by his taci-
turnity he, a historian, won his way to the Syndicateship.
He was exceedingly zealous and stubborn in his per-
petuation of all Dantzig’s legal fictions, especially those
against the parliamentary Polish estates, and bound by
the deepest affection to his own native city-state. Never-
theless, when all is said and done, the old man remained
a loyal and attached son of his greater motherland, the
Polish Republic, although he maintained more than one
legal distinction and harboured more than one grudge.
His first work of learning was ‘‘ The Polish Library,” written
in German. Yet on the title-page of the book he specified
the place where the book was published in a marked manner :
“ Tannenberg, where Wladislaw Jagiellon smote the Teutonic
lords.’”” He voices many subtle distinctions, e.g. that
Dantzig should be “ loyal’’ to the Polish Kings alone, and
is bound only to “ further the well-being” of the Polish
28 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Crown (hinting at the antithesis between a personal union
under the King and a real political union with the Republic).
He gets deeply angry at Poland for assuming towards
Dantzig the name domina. But he records in detail and
with pride and affection the services done by Dantzig for
Poland, and vice versa.
He takes pleasure in recording which Polish Kings
“honoured the city with their presence, and stayed here
either a shorter or longer time’’—‘‘ Casimir twice, Sig-
mund III six times, Wladislaw III as sovereign three times,
Jan Casimir the like number, August II four times, Alexander,
Sigmund I, Sigmund Augustus, and Jan III Sobieski, each
once.’’ As for those kings who, alas, did not pay Dantzig
the favour of a visit, the loyalist Lengnich notes that King
Jan Albert died on the way to the city, Stephen Batory was
just starting for it when he passed away, King Henry Valois
was kept from a visit by the lack of time for it, and King
Michael by internal and external complications, “ although
the Queen manifested a keen desire to see our city.”” The
distinguished patriot of Dantzig, without being conscious
of it, and even in spite of his local connexion, became a
finished Pole. |
It should be added here that all the famous men of the
city who achieved repute in Europe belong without exception
to the period. of Dantzig’s union with Poland, and neither
to the former Teutonic time nor to the later Prussian one.
Such were the native-born John Hoeffen-Dantiscus already
mentioned (born 1485), Latinist and statesman; John
Hevelius, famous astronomer (born 1614), the friend of Jan
Sobieski, and who called the heavenly constellation he
discovered Scutum Sobiescianum, in honour of the Polish
King; the illustrious scientist Gabriel Fahrenheit (born
1686) ; the able lawyer and historian mentioned, Godfrey
Lengnich (born 1689); and the master of painting and
drawing, Daniel Chodowiecki (born 1726) .3°
We must also note that in the ancient city, besides the
admittedly prevailing German culture, there existed, and
even progressed, a Polish current joining in one stream with
the original Slav sources of the city and its surroundings,
and unceasingly strengthened by the ever closer relations and
union with Poland. This Polish element, flourishing right
THE DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC 29
up to the final separation of Dantzig from the Republic
fragmentary as it was, made itself felt not only in the
practical spheres of life, but also in those of the intellectual
evolution of the city. Polish literature played an illustrious
part in ancient Dantzig, where, from capital printing-presses,
from the beginning of the sixteenth to the end of the
eighteenth century, many a Polish book was issued. Here,
too, very early, after the famous Swedish menace (1656), a
Polish paper was printed under the editorship of the native-
born Jacob Weiss.3!
As a matter of fact, according to the word of an honest
German historian of Dantzig, ‘‘the Polish language must
have been as common at the time (sixteenth century and
after) on the lips of the people as the German. The result
was that in many churches, especially in St. James, St.
Bartholomew, and St. Catherine, Polish preaching was
the custom.’”’ Again, according to the same unquestioned
witness, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, until
the seizure of the city by Prussia, “‘ knowledge of Polish
was still indispensable for every citizen of Dantzig, so that
the sons of the first families, before entering the city high
schools, used to be sent for a time to some one of the small
towns or villages of the neighbourhood, where Polish was
the prevailing tongue.’’ This last detail, worthy of the
gravest attention, clearly demonstrates the fact that until
the fall of Poland its language was maintained in its purity
in Dantzig, and that the communities round about were
ethnographically Kashubian-Polish.34
Meanwhile, during the reign of August III, Dantzig’s
affairs with those of the entire Republic fell under the ominous
influence of its most dangerous neighbour, the new Prussian
King, Frederic the Great. His Silesian wars, and the fact
that during these wars trade was no longer safe, reduced
the export of corn from the city to a bare 20,000
measures a year. It soon recovered, with the conclusion
of peace, and in the following decade went up again to
50,000 measures.33
It was at this time that Dantzig, on the tercentenary
of its union with Poland, had an opportunity of expressing
publicly its unwavering adherence to the Republic. At the
two former anniversaries, the religious and political quarrels
30 DANTZIG AND POLAND
in the sixteenth and the disastrous years of war in the
seventeenth century had made joyous memorial celebrations
impossible. The more eagerly, then, did Dantzig set itself,
at the middle of the eighteenth century, to commemorate
the three hundredth anniversary of its happy connexion
with Poland. During this proud celebration (1754), and
in the eloquent orations of the learned Professor Gottlieb
Wensdorff, Pastor Titius, and others, in the verses written
in Latin and German, and in the hearty proclamations of
the Council and the Committees, there found vent both
the feelings of irreconcilable dislike of the Crusader yoke and
those of loyal gratitude and attachment to Poland.34
A couple of years later troublesome times came again
to the city, as the result of the Seven Years War set in
motion by Frederic the Great. And yet the danger of
the moment was one which threatened not only from the
side of Prussia, but still more from that of his enemy the
Czarina Elizabeth. In fact, at this time, a quarter of a
century after the trouble over Stanislaw, rumours of war
began to reach Dantzig from the east. Again the same
Russian menace appeared, though under another form.
It was in the second half of the Seven Years War.
Dantzig had in the main not only not lost by the war, but had
rather profited from it. It was an inexhaustible storehouse,
which supplied for good money, grain and forage for the
needs of both sides. But the medal had its reverse side.
Both warring parties, Prussian and Russian, carrying on
the conflict round about the city, conceived the fatal tempting
idea of getting it into their hands. The Prussians had
had it of old, as an inheritance from the Teutonic Order.
At this time, however, the desperate military situation in
which Frederic found himself made the thing impossible.
It was shown above how the same plan was in the mind of
Russia from the time of the visits of Peter the Great.
It now seemed as if Russia could achieve her wish,
because at the end of the Seven Years War the power of
Prussia appeared to be falling in ruins. Thanks chiefly
to the pressure of the Czarina’s armies, Frederic, appar-
ently quite beaten, yielded to the superior numbers of his
adversaries. The whole of Prussia proper was in Russian
hands, The oath of allegiance had been exacted already
THE DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC 31
in Koenigsberg to the Czarina Elizabeth, and in the cathedral
there, during three years (1758--62) the Russian Archimandrit,
Tichon, spoke for Elizabeth as if for the mistress of Prussian
lands.35
In the Russian camp, men began to think seriously of
annexing Dantzig. The plan, worked out by the Commander,
Field-Marshal Buturlin, was suddenly to be executed by
the Lieutenant-General Tchernyshew. With this end in
view he was to occupy the suburbs of the city, under the
pretence of a temporary strategic necessity. The Vice-
Chancellor Woronzow even began secret negotiations about
the matter at the Court of Versailles.
The official correspondence of that time between Saxony
and Poland proves that August III was seriously alarmed
by the news of the secret Russian attack on Dantzig. The
King was in Warsaw at the time. Fortunately joint
influences brought to bear on the allied Court in St.
Petersburg, and especially with the Czarina herself, were
successful. The project to seize the city was not, as far as
can be judged, properly worked out in the Russian Cabinet,
but arose rather in the camp, as simply an opportune idea.
For the rest, the whole military and political situation
was completely changed. Frederic recovered his power,
and a general time of peace-making ensued. It sufficed
that the danger threatening Dantzig from the Russian
quarter was removed for the time being without further
harmful consequences. And although later on similar dangers
were to menace her from the east, they never were able to
reach the stage of final execution.
1V
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION
MEANWHILE in another quarter an infinitely more serious
storm was gathering over Dantzig, a nearer peril from which
there was no escape, a danger that might be averted for
a time, but could not be escaped. It was the Prussian
peril. The Prussian King, heir of the Order, appeared as a
candidate for the prey of four centuries ago, lost then by
the Knights.
For long enough the Hohenzollerns, one after the other,
had paid passing visits at various times and had a look
at Dantzig. On their accession to the throne, journeying
from Berlin to the coronation city of Koenigsberg, they
were wont to make a halt in that town, and though they
were not yet able to lay a covetous hand upon it, they at
least surveyed its riches and beauty with eager eyes. Thus
the Great Elector, Frederic William, passed through in 1662.
Frederic I passed through five times (1690, 1697-98, 1701),
Frederic William I twice (1714, 1739). The latter used his
opportunity to entice away for his suite some tall grenadiers
of the city, who had been assigned to him as a guard of
honour. Lastly Frederic the Great visited Dantzig four
times, first as heir to the throne, and then as King (1735, 1740,
1753). |
This last, most distinguished as well as most dangerous
guest, did not indeed strive to carry out in person the design
of seizing Dantzig. Nevertheless, he was to work out most
precisely the plan of occupation, and start it on the way
of direct and brutal execution. For long he had had his
eye on the city, and desired it from the time when, as heir
to the throne, he saw how it defended its beloved King
Leszczynski. He wished to be joven by the people of Dantzig,
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 33
and had his own peculiar way to compass this end. He
wanted to be loved because of excessive hatred. He wanted
the people so to hate mightily the enemy in him, that they
would at last be forced rather to love in him the ruler. He
wanted to strangle them so long as neighbours, that they
would finally prefer to enjoy peace as his subjects.
This unexampled design of extortion on the part of
Frederic the Great towards Dantzig, with all its refinement
of detail, began with the first entrance into power of Poland’s
last King, Stanislaw August Poniatowski. From the
King’s election-day Frederic began ceaselessly to sap the
strength of the defenceless Republic, and especially the city
of Dantzig. Thus, under diverse pretexts, now temporary
reprisals, now averred titles of overlordship, the Prussian
King began to strangle the town cleverly and deliberately,
and all with conscious consistency and calculated masterliness.
As a first pretext he used the proclamation of universal
tariffs by the Diet assembled at Warsaw 1764 for the election
of Poniatowski. Although the matter was a purely internal
one for Poland, and the tariff involved all her boundaries
alike as well as her trade relations with all her neighbours,
yet Frederic felt himself injured personally, and justified
in making good the fancied wrong with his own hand, and
according to his own sweet will. He made it good, of course,
chiefly at the cost of Dantzig.
The city lived on its trade with Poland, thanks to the
free course of the Vistula. Frederic established a station
below Kwidzyn-Marienwerder, in the middle of the river ;
instituted unheard-of transit duties, introduced intolerable
rights of search, planted his soldiers and set up his cannon
(1765). Having thus pressed under his heavy hand the
life-giving artery of the city, he began systematically to
draw it tighter, without any mercy. It was plain robbery,
but it brought Frederic in considerable returns. For
this reason he paid no attention to the powerless protesta-
tions of the Republic of Poland and of Dantzig itself.
Fortunately, intervention came from a stronger Power,
that of Russia. Catherine II could not be deaf to the
desperate complaints of the Polish King in this regard,
since he had been elected under her zxgis, and Poniatowski
was her own candidate. As a result of her interposition
3
34 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Frederic had to yield, and remove his station in the Vistula,
which brought him so much gold.
But matters endlessly greater soon came along, which
thrust that of the tariff into a corner. Complications of a
political and religious nature arose, of which the final outcome
was the First Partition of the Republic. Frederic now put
forth his whole skill, first as tempter, then as negotiator. At
first his purpose was, either by pretences of favour, or by
crushing them with unbearable oppression, to sever the
people of Dantzig from Poland, to draw them toward himself,
and to reconcile them to an occupation. His next purpose
was, after getting to the point of negotiations for a partition,
at the same time, and as a part of the treaty, to obtain
Dantzig for his own possession as an addition to his other
gains from the transaction.
He began then first to make overtures to the people of
the city. At a time when he was kindling in Poland the
question of religious dissension as a step toward the partition,
the zealous Protestant King, who had just laid his tribute on
the earnings of his fellow-believers the Protestant citizens
of Dantzig by confiscating their wares, now began all at
once with zealous energy to appear in the réle of champion
of their religious liberties against Polish fanaticism. And
to attain his ends, he began in the name of the common
Protestant faith to urge the people, through his clever
agent in Dantzig, to link up with the Confederation of
Dissidents in Poland.
The honest councillors of the city defended themselves
against uninvited guardianship. They swore that their faith
was suffering no wrong, that they had no need to complain
of any of their burdens as Dissidents to the Polish Crown.
Finally, and really under compulsion, they joined the Con-
federation as ordered; but in the moment of entry they
entrenched themselves under the most express reservation,
that ‘“‘ they do not commit themselves to anything which
would compromise their loyalty owed to His Majesty the
King of Poland, and to the Most Serene Republic ’’ (1767).
A couple of years later, when the project of the partition
was ripe, Frederic adopted other tactics toward Dantzig.
From the réle of seduction he returned to that of oppression ;
from being a gracious master to being tyrannizer. Under
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 35
pretence of searching for deserters, he sent to the city re-
cruiting contingents, and took by force from among the
people recruits for the Prussian army. The unbounded
deceit of these pretensions was evident to all. He insisted
on taking four thousand conscripts who had “ deserted,” a
scandalous pretence, which would have involved a fair part
of the whole male population of the city. Using similar
trumped-up claims, he placed Prussian regiments on the city’s
territory, and under the pretext of some recompense due
to him he exacted a wholly arbitrary contribution from
the inhabitants of 200,000 ducats (1770).
As executor of these crying injustices, he placed in Dantzig
his agent, the notorious Legation-Councillor Junck, a pro-
fessional thief and provocateur, about whom even a modern
official Prussian historian had to admit that his chief business
was “‘ to provoke the people of Dantzig.”” Having exhausted
these pretensions as to deserters and recruits, Frederic, who
was never at a loss for devices, thought out a new plan.
With the beginning of the new year he invented an
“epidemic ’’ as a reason for investing the city with a
hygienic “ cordon’’ of troops, in return for which service
he obliged the city to pay him during the two years
1771-72 100,000 ducats.
Meanwhile the negotiations proper began about the
First Partition of Poland. From the start Frederic had
his mind set on Polish Prussia, but he did not forget
Dantzig. This neighbour and friend, the King of Prussia,
the zealous defensor fidei, the uninvited champion of the
Protestant faith of the people of Dantzig, as well as of their
physical health, now graciously designed to express his
willingness to receive them wholly beneath his sceptre.
It is true they were in no hurry to hasten under the
wings of their fellow Protestant black eagle, for they knew
very well his insatiable appetite for Customs dues. But
Frederic insisted on converting them to the Prussian faith
in his own way. And one must do him the justice to admit
that he did not let any possibilities slip. Now he was fawn-
ing, now vehement, now menacing, but ever full of resources
both in wealth of his tactics and in his eager persistency.
This greed and persistency struck his contemporaries forcibly.
Voltaire remarked to him tauntingly that if the Czarina had
86 DANTZIG AND POLAND
thoughts of Byzantium and Athens, he did not cease thinking
of Dantzig. ‘‘ Your Royal Majesty would prefer the port
of Dantzig to that of Pirzus: and rightly !”’
Frederic went to work like a master. At the outset,
when the first negotiations were on, he pretended to give
up Dantzig entirely, reserving himself, of course, “ suitable
recompense for that city.’’ Then, after assuring himself
of quite plenteous ‘‘recompense”’ for a thing which did
not belong to him at all, he began afresh to remember the
city, this wondrous treasure, and that with increased vehe-
mency. During the negotiations about the partition in
St. Petersburg he kept urging his claim to get control of
the city right to the end, before the principal mistress of
the business, Catherine. He was bound to have from her
adjudged that indispensable, trifling, addition of Dantzig
to his share of Poland.
“As far as Dantzig is concerned,’ he wrote to his Am-
bassador in St. Petersburg, ‘‘ I regard the matter as quite
simple. Why, Avignon was once the Pope’s, and the
French took it. Strasbourg was a free city, and it was
incorporated by Louis XIV. History shows many other
such cases. For the rest I should not care about any such
insignificant trading town. But one can see at a glance
on the map that it cuts in two all my possessions.”
He was deeply offended that ‘‘such a row is made”’
about poor ‘‘ Dantzig, which would be only a nuisance
(une niaiserie) to the Russians.’’ He even threatened, if
refused, to break his alliance with the Empress, taking
advantage of her difficulties with the Turks, and frightening
her with the threat of getting Austria to intervene. “Il am
a business man,’ he wrote to St. Petersburg. ‘“‘ Ye come to
me to buy goods, to get help, and subsidies. I say, Please
pay me so and so much, and in such coin. Ye reply, We
do not wish to pay in this coin. In this case the merchant
bows low, shuts up his wares, and prefers to betake himself
elsewhere. How, then, my lords Russians! Do you want
me to run risks? Do you want reinforcements from me ?
Agreed, but Polish Prussia and Dantzig—-that is the
price of my help! You see, my beloved Russians, you
must decide whether you need my wares or not. Can you
get along without them? Perhaps Dantzig, which you
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 37
love so dearly, can give you what I am selling too dear.
Indeed I find it hard to believe that such a vanity (une
miséve) as Dantzig is should detain for a moment the clear
and wise mind of the great Empress.”’ 36
All this eloquence availed for the time being naught.
It was premature. The unhappy Frederic could not yet
reach Dantzig. The resistance of the people of the city
themselves was naturally not insignificant ; they defended
themselves desperately against their hated Prussian neigh-
bour. They raised an alarm throughout the whole of
Europe. They turned for aid to their former trading
comrades and patrons, the General Estates of Holland.
They turned also for help to Great Britain.%’
We have noted that the relations of Dantzig with England
were of very early date. Of yore England fed her people
with Polish grain brought by way of Dantzig, supplied her
fleet with magnificent timber for masts from Polish forests,
and in return kept Poland provided with her fine cloths
and the savoury products of her overseas colonies. In the
days of Elizabeth George Carrew reached Dantzig as the
Queen’s special messenger, bearing a declaration of her
favour and of her commercial preferences (1598). Dantzig
in return sent an embassy to King James I.
It is true that at times passing disputes arising out of
local commercial rivalries grew into fairly sharp quarrels
between Dantzig and England; but they were arranged
without difficulty to the satisfaction of both parties. The
agreements made between the delegates of the English
Company and the Senate of Dantzig led to a mutually helpful
Commercial Treaty (1631). The men of Dantzig secured
from Charles II an interpretation of the universal English
Navigation Act, which gave them special advantages (1668).
John Robinson, Envoy Extraordinary of Queen Anne, came
to Dantzig, and concluded in her name an Anglo-Dantzig
agreement, very advantageous to the city., Settled in 1706,
it regulated mutual trade relations for the whole century,
and has never been properly done away with to this
very day.
It was just because of violence done to this last agree-
ment by Frederic, that Dantzig turned with complaints to the
English Government. At once the citizens set forth elo-
38 DANTZIG AND POLAND
quently through the Polish Ambassador in London, Bukaty,
the peril that hung over their town—not only of plundering,
but even of seizure by Prussia. These exertions called forth
at least a certain moralreaction. Bukaty’s memorial, printed
in English in London, drew the attention of the public.
The young Edmund Burke time after time raised his voice
against the violence being done to Poland, in his ‘‘ Annual
Register,” in the years 1772-73.
Frederic became uneasy. He tried through Maltzan, his
Ambassador in London, to check the interest shown in
Britain for Poland in general and Dantzig in particular.
“England,” he wrote, “‘ has no reason for worrying about
Polish matters. They are really strange to her, and cannot
have the least effect either upon her position or her
interests,’’3*
Unfortunately, the then English Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Lord Suffolk, rightly branded at a later time by the
great Chatham as an “ unconstitutional, inhuman and un-
christian ’’ politician, did not make a successful defence
of Poland, which was being torn in pieces, nor yet of
unhappy Dantzig, exposed as a victim of Frederic the
Great’s extortions. The bold and far-seeing writer J: Williams
estimated better than the Minister the unworthy conduct
of the Prussian King, ‘‘ whose family has received their all,
except the lakes and sand banks of Brandenburg, from the
Crown of Poland,’ and has never ceased to repay the
Republic with the bitterest hatred and the gravest injuries.
In such a pass the people of Dantzig, who could not rely
either on the help of powerless, plundered Poland, nor yet
on the distant, platonic sympathy of Holland and England,
once more appealed,to the mighty and near-lying Russia.
Here once more they did in fact find a certain temporary
support. Of yore Czarina Anna had promised in a special
amnesty (1736), after the city had been taken by Muennich,
and the Dantzig delegation had begged for pardon in St.
Petersburg, ‘‘ her most Serene intervention for maintaining
the present rights and liberties of Dantzig, religious and
other.” Later, after the city had been forced to identify
itself with the Confederation of Dissidents, the same decree
was confirmed by an ukase of Catherine II in Dantzig’s
favour (1767).
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION — 39
This réle of ee which Russia played toward the
rich seaport, was naturally dictated by deeper selfish
considerations. The policy of Catherine was as little
inclined to give up the purpose of getting possession of
Dantzig as had been that of Peter, or Anna, or Elizabeth.
There was thus the less disposjtion in the Cabinet to let the
rich spoil of the city go towards enlarging the Prussian share
from the partition of Poland. As it was, Frederic was to
extend this share far and away beyond what the treaty
gave him, by use of unheard-of violence and by deceit in
setting the boundaries.
The cautious councillors of Dantzig were wise enough
to profit by all these circumstances, in pleading the cause
of their safety before the Czarina against the Prussian
King. The skilled and energetic Willebrandt, who was
then Dantzig’s agent in St. Petersburg, was able to reach
several men of influence: Count Orlow, who had been
Catherine’s favourite, the influential Saldern, Prince Golizyn,
and others. He succeeded in weakening the influence
of the Prussian Ambassador on the Neva, Count Solms,
and parried his claims to Dantzig. At the same time the
Dantzig agent in London, Anderson, invoked his connections
in the merchant world of the City, and gave rise to rather
more express instructions from Lord Suffolk for Gunning, the
English Ambassador in St. Petersburg, in defence of Dantzig.
Willebrandt’s efforts and the favourable representations of
Gunning, were supported also in lively fashion by the friendly
and long-acknowledged influence of Holland. Thanks to
this, the State Council in St. Petersburg tabled a thoroughly
sharp protest against the Prussian designs upon Dantzig.
At the end Frederic had to yield.
He did it in his own way. He yielded outwardly, in
order the better to spring later on the desired booty, and
meantime he took special pay for his concession. Meeting
a decided opposition from Russia in the matter of Dantzig,
the Prussian King set forth his formal declaration in the
Treaty of the First Partition (1772), that ‘‘ for renouncing
all rights to the city of Dantzig and its lands, he takes
by way of recompense (en guise d’équivalent) the rest of
Polish Prussia.’ 39
But Frederic the Great did not give up so easily. He
40 DANTZIG AND POLAND
never cared for the most sacred treaties, but, just as in the
two Silesian and in the Seven Years War, he broke them again
with brutal violence. He was the less disposed to bind
himself by the first Treaty of Partition, which was in truth
nothing else than an act of open international robbery,
consecrated by diplomacy. He therefore set about for
himself to extend the portion of the spoil his collaborators
had assigned to him. The moment he had renounced
Dantzig solemnly in the Treaty, he proceeded to demand
its seizure. The trouble was that, although the three
Powers dividing Poland had signed the contract, a year
had to pass before this was sanctioned by the plundered
Polish Republic. By that time Frederic thought to better
his terms, by forcing the people of Dantzig to renounce
Poland and submit to his sceptre.
The refined cynicism with which Frederic set about
this compulsory torturing of a defenceless city so long and
so cruelly, that it must sometime surrender to his authority,
has few parallels in modern history. Injustices have been
done, far worse from a material point of view, and bloodier ;
but there never was a meaner one morally. Frederic began
with what the Treaty of Partition had suggested, the im-
mediate taking over of that part of Poland known as
Royal or Polish Prussia (West Prussia) and Polish Pomerania,
which was assigned to him, and by which he could thus
encircle Dantzig. Free from scruples toward the “territory of |
Dantzig,’’ guaranteed by the Treaty, he advanced on the
spot to its very gates. He forced his way into the suburban
communities, and took unquestionably city properties
under the sway of Prussia. With his toll turn-pikes he
beset the roads from the gates, annoyed the citizens on
the way to their suburban villas, and hindered the supply
of food from the district. It was a formal blockade of
Dantzig. In this way he hoped to crush opposition, and
incline the inhabitants to accept his patriarchal lordship.
This was all, however, only the prelude to the most
serious blow with which the King meant to surprise and
humble the stubborn city. Together with West Prussia
and Pomerania he had already taken possession of the
twelfth-century monastery of the Cistercians in Oliva,
near Dantzig, which contained the tombs of the ancient
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 41
Pomeranian Princes. In his new rdle as pious successor
of the abbots of Oliva, Frederic now appeared with the
gratuitous claim that the whole left bank of the lower Vistula
belonged to the monks; and on this principle, with the
support of his worthy Minister Hertzberg’s learned exposi-
tion, he put into effect the liquidation of all this fancied
monastic heritage without delay.
Thus in a trice, in the utterest secrecy toward his partners
of the Partition, Russia and Austria, the Prussian troops,
by the middle of September 1772, had broken into Dantzig’s
borders, taken Langfuhr and Altschottland, even got con-
trol for the time of the peninsula of Hela, and, most
important of all, became lords of the port itself. In the
Neufahrwasser they hung out the Prussian Eagle, established
a Prussian control-station, and began to exact dues from
vessels for the benefit of the King’s treasury. This meant
striking at the very heart of Dantzig.
Joanna Schopenhauer, mother of the famed philosopher,
herself a writer of distinction, a member of an old patrician
family, writes thus on that day, describing this unheard-of
violence, the seizure of the harbour of Dantzig by the
troops of Frederic in time of complete peace: “ Like a
vampire the Prussian King had fallen upon my unhappy
city, committed to destruction, and has sucked out of it
its life-blood. This for many a year, until it is fully ex-
hausted.”’
Under this iron oppression the people of Dantzig soon
began to lose their breath. All the time Frederic, without
ceasing to strangle them, kept up his system of offering
tempting terms as well. The ugly Benoit, his envoy in
Warsaw, bought over for him the Commission of the
Warsaw Diet, set up by the Three Powers to get the Partition
approved, and incited it against Dantzig. The same Prussian
envoy, at the same time, did all in his power to incline the
agent of Dantzig in Warsaw, Gralath, against Poland and
to surrender his city. In the reports sent by Gralath to
the Senate in Dantzig (1773) there is constant mention of
Benoit’s vehement persuasions “‘ to this frightful step,”’ 1.e.
of cutting off Dantzig from Poland and uniting it with
Prussia.4°
All the time Reichardt, the Prussian Ambassador in
42 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Dantzig, was doing his utmost by persuasion and threat,
to incline the City Council itself to submission. ‘‘ My King,”
he declared cynically, ‘‘ will have little profit from the
trunk, i.e. West Prussia, if he does not also get the head,”
i.e. Dantzig. In any case Frederic was resolved to maintain
the suzerainty thus secured over the port of Dantzig, as it
brought him rich returns, and had some day or other to
bring with it the falling of the city itself into his talons.
This last was delayed for the time by the desperate
protests of the citizens, their appeal to Holland and England,
and chiefly their appeal to Russia. It was the decided
opposition of the latter Power that checked Frederic’s plan
of swallowing up Dantzig for the moment. Yet the thing
that helped most of all was the unvarying opposition
of the inhabitants themselves. The common people of the
parish, especially, manifested the most obstinate stubborn-
ness, even when the Senate began to weaken and yield under
obvious pressure. The beggared City Senate and Aldermen
were already decided to agree to the fateful submission
forced upon them, to accept Frederic’s sovereignty over city
and port. The affrighted Polish King, poor Stanislaw
August, from Warsaw, urged them through the a of
Gralath to make this last step.
“But the Third Committee would not sais of it.
On the other hand, it notified the Merchants’ Exchange
and the guilds, who gathered at once, and had proclaimed
in the public squares that they would rather be buried
in the ruins of their city, than have to submit to such
sovereignty. The crowd threatened with death any one
who dared to act otherwise, and even threw themselves
in rage on the Prussian agent and commissioner, whenever
these officials showed themselves on the street.”
This simple citizen people, partly of Polish extraction,
who had drawn a living from Poland for ages, and in
whose memory the still ineffaced memory of the murderous
Teutonic crimes of old and more recent Prussian brutalities
and extortions lived, held to the Republic by unerring in-
stinct, and shrank desperately from the Hohenzollerns.
In view of this attitude of the simple folk of Dantzig and
of the Russian objections, Frederic could not realize to the
full his plan for Dantzig. His fury knew no bounds. In
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 43
his first moment of disappointment he thought of new
violence. He hit upon the hellish plan of cutting off the
city from drinking-water. He ordered the course of the
Radunia, from which Dantzig had fresh water, to be de-
flected, and the water-mains to be cut, in order by this
heroic means to bring the city to its knees. On second
thought he shrank, however, from the European scandal
which would surely have resulted, and two weeks later
withdrew his commands. He finally renounced the idea of
Dantzig, so far as he himself, but not so far as Prussia was
concerned ; and in the Treaty of Partition concluded with
the Republic he renewed his promise to renounce solemnly
for all time his claims to the city.4
Yet he did not cease victimizing the unhappy city to
the end of his life, fourteen years later. There was no end
of exploiting, of humiliating, of starving it out, with the
help of the burdensome Commercial Treaty with Poland.
This had been forced upon the latter by the pact of Partition,
and excluded Dantzig, as though it were a foreign city,
by numberless, savage pretences, taking now one, now
another form—cruelties, tariff excesses, police abuses, and
abuses in the matter of recruiting. But his chief task, the
seizure of the city, Frederic left to his successors. When
in his Political Testament he advised them to gather the
Republic, as if it were an artichoke or a cabbage, “leaf by
leaf, city by city,” he had in mind above all the tasty leaf,
Dantzig.
Frederic William II, his nephew and successor, re-
membered the advice. Pretending to knightly nobleness,
he was at first welcomed with confidence by the wretched
people of Dantzig, who hoped for a respite after the night-
mare of his uncle’s presence. He was hospitably entertained
in the city on passing through, after his uncle’s death,
to his coronation in Koenigsberg (1786). But the new King
was destined rudely to shatter the confidence thus reposed
in him. Guided by his first Minister Hertzberg, his uncle’s
helper in the most shameful attacks upon Dantzig, he went
the same way of occupation, although he veiled it by pre-
tended friendship for Poland. Thus, in his friendly nego-
tiations with the Great Diet of Warsaw, he kept putting
forward his wish to have Dantzig as his reward. But the
4h DANTZIG AND POLAND
Poles had learned to prize at its true value their jewel,
Dantzig, and the city prized more than ever its happy
relation to Poland. The consequence was that it disliked
more intensely the prospect of being annexed by the hated
Prussia, after all the refined martyrdom it had suffered for
sO many years at the hands of Frederic the Great.
Once more it turned out that the common people of
the city, the traders and the working-men, were permeated
with the most insistent repugnance to Prussia, and the
most loyal temper toward Poland. They had in their veins
a large admixture of the ancient, stubborn Kashubian
blood and retained the old traditions of bloody encounters
with the Order. So the Third Committee sent two
delegates of its own accord, two worthy members, Barth
and Richter, to the Great Diet, and to King Poniatowski.
They brought to Warsaw a solemn appeal, signed by “the
most obedient and hard-beset subjects of His Majesty,”
fifteen speakers for the city, sixty-four members of the
Four Quarters, as well as the Elders and Companions of
the Third Committee.
““Most Serene and Most Gracious Sovereign ! ’’—such
was the way in which the defenceless Dantzig turned to
the last Polish King, almost in his last hour as Sovereign—
‘“‘ The tiny people of Dantzig, whose home on the face of the
earth scarcely looks bigger than an ant-hill, has long been
unhappy. Panting heavily we await help and relief, and
as yet we have not submitted. ... A piece of bread and
Freedom !—that is our cry. Most Serene Lord, our land
has been torn in pieces. Our harbour, the rights to which
the city has never renounced, is in foreign hands, another
is lord over it. ... We cannot exist longer, unless our
territorial possessions that have been taken, together with
the port, are returned to us. Most Serene Lord! We
stand desperate on a brink, with a madly raging sea of
fire round about us. Unless you point us back to the path
we were treading until we lost it eighteen years ago (at the
First Partition), we must surely fall down into this fiery
abyss.”
These fears of the citizens were fully justified. It is
true that with the death of their worst persecutor, Frederic
the Great, they had a somewhat easier life. The export
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 45
of grain had fallen, thanks to that monarch’s crimes, to
9,000 measures in 1782, but it began by degrees to go up
again. During the period of the Great Diet it attained an
average of some 25,000 measures a year (1789-92), and
that when the market prices of rye and wheat were extra-
ordinarily high. |
Only the more, however, with these evidences of reviving
prosperity did the impatient appetite of the Prussians
for Dantzig grow from more to more. The matter of the
city became a veritable stone of stumbling in the dealing
of Poland with Prussia at the time. Above all it stood in
the way of the desired Polish-Prussian alliance. Frederic
William II, his sly Minister Hertzberg, and Lucchesini his
artful Ambassador in Warsaw, made use of every opportunity
to get Dantzig from Poland as speedily as possible, without
at the same time losing the latter’s goodwill. They were
even able to throw dust in the eyes of the English Govern-
ment.
They succeeded in getting the Younger Pitt, then head
of the Government, to advise Poland to cede Dantzig to
Prussia (1790-91). On Pitt’s recommendation, Hailes, the
honest and friendly but shortsighted English Ambassador
in Warsaw, declared himself for this fatal step in repeated
public appearances and writings. This all was directly
opposed to the ancient friendly relations existing between
England and Poland. It was even opposed to England’s
own interests, and it can only be explained by the false
suggestions made by the Berlin Government, the pretended
loyal ally of England and of Poland.
Neither the Warsaw Diet nor Polish public opinion,
however, fell a victim to these suggestions. They were
guided by a safe and healthy conviction of the national
interest in the matter of Dantzig. It is true that, while
negotiating with the Berlin Government about a new trade
agreement, which would lower the murderous tariffs set
up by Frederic the Great, in the trade agreement made
fifteen years before, and forced upon the already divided
Poland, mention was also made of Dantzig itself. But
this was done in order not to provoke Frederic William for
the moment, since his support and alliance was absolutely
necessary against Catherine. Warsaw had to free itself
46 DANTZIG AND POLAND
from the concerted Russian yoke, and carry out needed
reforms in administration, in finance, and in the army.
In spite of this, none of the advocates of an alliance with
Prussia wanted really to buy it prematurely at the price
of Dantzig. Not only did the pro-Russian minority,
opposed to the Prussian alliance as such, take its stand
fiercely against such a bargain, through the medium of
speeches in the Diet, public pamphlets, and proclamations
strewn through the streets, but the great patriot Staszyc
did the same, though he was on principle in agreement
with the majority in the Diet.
‘Let us get us allies,’ he wrote in his celebrated pamphlet,
‘Warnings for Poland.’ ‘‘ But let us not buy them.
Better pay double taxes. . . . Better pay duties at the
highest rate, chosen by our traitors from three lower ones.
But let us keep an outlet to the sea.”’
And so it was. The tariff preference and the trade
agreement were renounced, but “ the sea was kept.’’ Both
the Diet and the Cabinet declared most decidedly that
Dantzig must irrevocably belong to Poland. The solici-
tations of Prussia in Berlin and Warsaw were met with
polite excuses. Dantzig was assigned at once in 1791 by
special mention in the privileges accorded by the Great
Diet to the cities, representation in the Diet, and a ha
‘‘ which is not to be denied them.”’
On its own part Dantzig stood with well-proved loyatty
behind the Great Diet, and welcomed joyously the famous
reforming Constitution of the Third of May. Kahlen, the
long-resident agent of the city in Warsaw, did not wish to
listen, when Hailes in confidence unwisely tried to win him
over to supporting the cession of the city to Prussia. A little
later, and from another side, the same man was solicited
by Bulhakow, the Russian Minister in Warsaw, in the
interests of the pro-Russian Confederation of Targowica,
which was already in preparation, aiming to ruin Poland
and the Constitution of Third of May. But here, too,
Kahlen bore himself worthily, and returned a decided
negative.
It happened soon, however, that the Great Diet, and
the May Constitution, and the nation, found themselves
menaced by the superior might of Russia, by the treachery
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 47
of Prussia, and by the crime of Targowica, and the peril
of a second Partition became visibly nearer. For a moment
the idea was entertained of defending the cause of Poland
behind the faithful walls of Dantzig. This was in the sorry
autumn of 1792, when victorious Targowica took over the
administration in Warsaw, under the egis of Russia; and
from the west the might of Prussia was reaching after the
chosen booty of Great Poland, as well as for the long-desired
‘keys of Dantzig. At that fateful hour the modest Polish
Lieutenant, Stanislaw Fisher, who was partly of German
blood, and who later became Kosciuszko’s adjutant, and the
Chief of Staff for Prince Joseph Poniatowski, first thought
of Dantzig. He decided himself to investigate the chances
of defending the Republic’s only port. He took leave of
absence, and went to the seaport city.
Lieutenant Fisher found the Prussians within the
city limits, it is true, as they had long made them-
selves at home in Quadendorf, and even in the Scottish
suburb itself. From these points of vantage they thought
any fine day to make their way into the very centre of the
city. But he found the walls, bastions, and arsenal “in
the best of order.’’ What was more, he found the same
sentiments among the citizen-body, the merchants, and
the guilds, as well as among the body of officers, as had
aroused the enduring defenders of Stanislaw fifty years
before. |
Fisher met the councillors, the youth of the patrician
and merchant classes, the officers of the city artillery, the
Schuppelius and Niedermayer families, people whose sym-
pathies were with their mother city Dantzig, and who
were also warm for Poland. He examined carefully the
fortifications and the arsenal. He was amazed at their
fine condition, at the considerable stores of weapons and
war-gear of every kind. He drank his wine with the youth
of the city as a brother. He wept with them in the
theatre, whither he was invited to see the noble works of
Schiller, redolent of the very spirit of freedom.
These youths of the city, with their names ending in
“us,” were fired by the best of tempers. They aptly
recalled the benefactions and privileges of the Republic,
the favour of King Sigmund, the coming of King Stanislaw,
48 DANTZIG AND POLAND
and the cannon-balls of Muennich. Above all, they recalled
the iron, covetous hand of Frederick the Great, which
strangled their trade and prosperity. They shuddered at
the sight of the approaching second Partition, and the
certainty of their being annexed by Prussia.
On returning to his division, Fisher reported his observa-
tions in Dantzig to his friend Vice-Brigadier John Henry
Dombrowski, then one of the staff-officers of the Polish army,
and later an illustrious general and patriot. The future
creator of the Polish Legions in Italy, a learned expert in
military history, knew well the glorious story of the sieges of
the city. He formed the purpose of defending it once more,
and of using the loyal temper of its inhabitants in an attempt
to save Poland from the new peril of division which now
threatened her.
Even then, at the beginning of 1793, the Prussians, after
crossing the boundary, had occupied Great Poland with
strong army corps, and were getting ready to take Dantzig.
Dombrowski, in the face of a desperate situation, conceived
the bold idea of gathering the Polish army together with
the garrison and artillery of Warsaw, of striking at the
Prussians, cutting his way through to Dantzig, and there
entrenching to await help or some diversion through the
French Revolution. Although this extraordinary scheme
of Dombrowski did not come into execution, owing to
unfavourable circumstances, it was all the same a striking
proof of the position enjoyed by Dantzig, both political and
military, at the very end of its age-long union with the
Republic.
Meanwhile the last hour of Dantzig had struck, both as a
Polish and as a free city. In keeping with the treaty for
the Second Partition of Poland, made in St. Petersburg,
Prussia got the city at last. And she got it in virtue of a
most singular and scandalous international pact, as a reward
for attacking revolutionary France.
‘The King of Prussia,” read the treaty, “ binds himself
together with the Roman Emperor to take part in the
war against the French rebels (contre les rebelles frangats),
and not to conclude a separate treaty with them, nor yeta
truce. .. . By way of reward for the cost of this war he
shall take possession of the lands, cities and districts (of
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 49
Great Poland), as well as of Dantzig and its territory”
(“et pour dédommagement des dépenses qu’entraine et
entrainera cette guerre (contre la France). ...S. M.
Prussienne se metira en possession de pays, villes et districts
de la Grande Pologne) en y ajoutant la ville de Dantzig avec
son territoive’’).44
In this unheard-of way, by a robbery of Poland, and as
a reward for a robbery of France, Dantzig became the booty
of Prussia. A richly-recompensed Russia assented, and an
indifferent Europe received the news in silence. On the
other hand, it was clear that no hindrance could be offered
from the side of the helpless Republic. The Confederation
of Targowica, into which Bulhakow had recently wished to
draw Dantzig, now handed it over to Prussia in obedience
to orders from the Czarina Catherine. The Diet of Grodno,
constrained by Russian bayonets, had to confirm the seizure
by a new pact of Partition with Prussia.
At the Second Partition, just as at the first, Berlin did
not wait at all for the forced assent of Poland, whether from
the Diet or from the Confederation. At once it set itself
to gather up both the territories of Great Poland and the
now at last ripened harvest of Dantzig. The whole scheme
for finally consummating this business of annexation was
a worthy epilogue to the whole ugly tragedy of violence
and villainy which had long tortured the unhappy city.
In feverish haste, at the beginning of 1793, Frederic William,
in a confidential letter to the Supreme College of War in
Berlin, gave orders for the taking of Dantzig by a sudden
assault of arms. The Lieutenant-General selected for the
task, Bruenneck, delayed, however, the execution of this
rather risky attack. For his scouting parties reported that
the men of the city had foreseen a possible surprise. They
doubled their pickets and their vigilance. They had, too,
in addition to the regular military garrison, some seven
thousand civilian guards for an emergency, as well as
eight thousand men “of every estate,’’ ready to defend
themselves to the last against the Prussians.
The best that could happen was thus a massacre, only too
closely recalling the ‘‘ surprise’ of the Teutons in Dantzig
five centuries before. In view of this fact the middle way
of political pressure and armed menace was chosen.
4
50 DANTZIG AND POLAND
A series of most ridiculous demands were set forth, meant
to justify the necessity of occupying Dantzig by Prussian
armies. The Point de départ of these fabulous claims—those
of the Berlin wolf on the Dantzig lamb which troubled
the waters at the mouth of the Vistula—was the imagined
Jacobinism of the bloodthirsty people of Dantzig, which
threatened the safety of poor Prussia.
That is why the Prussian agent in Dantzig, von Linden-
owsky, produced in January 1793 a categorical demand
for the handing over of a certain Garnier, a Frenchman
said to be a Jacobin envoy of the Paris Convention, who in
the previous November had come to the city from Berlin.
The City Council, although its investigations did not discover
any guilt on Garnier’s part, handed him over to the Prussians
in fear of charges of provocation. The result was a violent
protest, both from the merchants and from the Second
and Third Committees, against such a violation of the right
of asylum for a French citizen. The upshot was that the.
Prussian Government made new demands, both because
of this “‘ Jacobin ”’ protest, and because of suspected secretion
of papers compromising Garnier on the part of the Dantzig
authorities.
Meanwhile the end of the month brought the news of the
entry into Great Poland of Prussian troops, and of the taking
of Thorn. The news was an ominous forecast for Dantzig of its
own ruin. It called forth unbounded indignation. Crowds
of people walked the streets of the city, hurling threats at
the Prussians, urging the inhabitants to arms, and singing
the new hymn of liberty, the Marseillaise. At once the
Berlin Government began with monstrous charges arising out
of these annoying meetings and revolutionary songs. It
used the opportunity, too, for making plausible its suspicious
deeds in connection with the imminent occupation.
*‘ The same reasons,’ reads the memorable declararation
of Frederic William II, issued in Berlin at the end of February,
1793, in the matter of the city and territory of Dantzig,
““ which moved His Majesty the King of Prussia to send
his troops into certain districts of Great Poland, now lay
upon him the necessity of seizing the city and territory
of Dantzig. Without mentioning here the scarcely amicable
attitude of the city for years toward His Majesty, it is certain
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 51
that it has become of late one of the seats of that vicious
sect, the Jacobins, which goes from crime to crime, striving
to spread its iniquities on every side with the filthy assistance
of its messengers and proselytes. One of these thieves,
after trying in vain to spread the poison of his teaching
among the happy and deeply loyal Prussian people, was
openly received by Dantzig ; and even when the facts were
explained, it was scarcely possible to get his protectors to
give him up.
“‘ This fresh example, together with other vices of a falsely
understood freedom; furthermore, the secret connexions
maintained by French and Polish co-operators in a conspiracy
with that party, which by the boldness of its maxims out-
weighs the number of the infinitely more thoughtful citizens ;
finally, the ease with which our common foe (the French
Republic) can procure, with the help of friends in Dantzig,
every kind of supplies, and especially grain—all these are
the symptoms which have drawn His Majesty’s attention
to that city. He had thus to see that it was kept within
the limits of action proper to its station, above all in order
to secure safety for the Prussian citizens residing in the
neighbourhood.
“With this in view, His Majesty the King of Prussia
has ordered the Lieutenant-General de Raumer to take
possession of the city with a sufficient force of troops, in
order to keep order there, and safeguard the general peace.
It will be best for the citizens of Dantzig to serve their
cause by prudent and kindly dependence on the favour
of His Majesty by voluntarily admitting His Majesty’s
armies, and by receiving them as friends.’’45
This capital document is worthy of notice. Apart from
the above-mentioned secret pact of Partition, concluded in
St. Petersburg, it is the one public, official formulation, in
the name of the Prussian King and his Government, of the
objective, legal and political rights of Prussia to her lordship,
or rather, if we take the Prussian official definition, to her
“acquiring ’’ of Dantzig, and her holding it to this day.
“Falsely understood freedom ’’—this is the dislike of
Dantzig for Prussian bondage; “scarcely amicable attitude ”’
—towards the Prussians who had victimized the city for
thirty years; connexion “‘ with Polish conspirators ’”’”—
52 DANTZIG AND POLAND
i.e. with its rightful lord and mother-state, personified
in the Great Diet; an inclination for the French Republic—
which was proclaiming the modern watchwords: there
you have the villainy of Dantzig, the imputations under
which she was compelled under the Prussian yoke for over
a century.
At the beginning of March General Raumer approached
the walls of Dantzig at the head of a large army, and armed
with this royal declaration. He demanded the instant
surrender of the chief defences of the city and the fortress
at the mouth of the Vistula, as well as the severance of all
trade relations with France. The situation was a desperate
one. There was no prospect of help from any quarter.
After three days of noisy deliberation, the view of the
merchants prevailed, that the city should be completely sur-
rendered to Prussia, seeing that self-defence was impossible
and every support from without was lacking.
But having perforce taken this decision to open the
city gates to the armed Prussians, those enemies of Dantzig
and of the Republic, the citizens turned with declaration
of their due allegiance to the Polish Government in Warsaw.
In a dolorous letter “to our King,” Stanislaw August,
they sorrowfully explained the situation, making it clear
that, to save innocent blood and to hinder the complete
destruction of the place, ‘‘ deprived of all counsel and support,
cut off from all assistance from Your Royal Majesty,”
they had found themselves obliged to submit to the
overwhelming forces of the enemy. On the other hand,
in surrendering by force into Prussian hands, the City
Council set express conditions, and won from General
Raumer certain fundamental guarantees for the future.
These concerned their internal autonomy, their: rights to
the harbour, to safety of trade and to exemption from military
service.4®
All this amounted to a capitulation on terms, but never-
theless, as was to be foreseen, the Prussians treated it with
no kind of respect. In fact, two weeks later, at the end of
the month, a categorical ‘‘ Occupation Patent” arrived from
Frankfurt-am-Main, the Grand Headquarters of Frederic
William, who, while taking the field against the French Revo-
lution, had heard from Raumer of the readiness of Dantzig
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 53
to capitulate (Besitizergreifungspatent), This ‘‘ Patent,” with
convenient forgetfulness of promises given, rejected all the
' city’s conditions and ordered its immediate seizure. This
happened, by a strange coincidence, on the very day of
the murder of the Mayor Letczkow and his associates by
the Teutonic commander, and just a year before the day
of the Warsaw Insurrection, the memorable Thursday of
Passion Week, 1793. The Senate, having neither escape nor
power, at once ordered the inner fortifications to be given
up. Prussian troops were at last to enter the city.
It was then that the last effort at defence on the part
of the loyal citizen was made. For a fortnight, since
the first agreement with the Prussian General, feeling in
the town had been in a state of menacing excitement, and
this broke out now in a violent storm. Indignant throngs
surrounded the city hall. Amid deafening cheers men
demanded war to the last with the Prussian intruder. They
thundered at the cowardice and treachery of the Senate.
They even began to set the warehouses of wealthy patricians
on fire, as traitors to the city and the Republic. Their
numbers included, during these demonstrations against
the Prussians and for their liberty and Poland, the great
majority of the inhabitants: all the petty traders and part
of the larger merchants, the guilds, with the butchers at
the head, the artisans, and then the labourers, mariners,
dockers, and the soldiers belonging to the garrison of the
fortress.
This all happened without any encouragement from
agonizing Poland, and in fierce defiance of the Prussians.
The people's own inborn instinct of self-preservation shrank
desperately from dealings with Prussia, and kept firm on the
side of Poland. Men rushed to the storming of the arsenal.
In a trice they had laid hands on fire-arms. They seized
the cannon on the ramparts, and taking by force ammunition
from the artillery stores, began to cannonade with grape-
shot and rifle-fire the approaching Prussian columns. These,
taken by surprise and forced to retreat, opened fire with
big guns and from their own lines, so that a large number
of the improvised defenders of the city fell as victims.
This time also, just as it happened nearly five centuries
before, the ‘“ acquisition” of Dantzig by Prussia was accom-
54 DANTZIG AND POLAND
plished by an act of brutal violence, baptized by and at the
cost of the innocent blood of the inhabitants. It was clear
that this hopeless effort of the people in defence of their
city must be abandoned at once, as the Prussians were in
possession of the fortifications. After some days of rioting,
there was nothing for it but to submit to the inevitable. At
a morning hour of early April the first two regiments of
Prussian infantry entered Dantzig through the four open
gates of the city. A regiment of dragoons was with them.
The citizens looked on in sullen silence. The common crowd
broke out in unrestrained curses. But the soldiers of the
city and of the Vistula fortress broke their weapons, declaring
that they would not serve the Prussians against Poland
and France. The whole garrison, except the officers, were
led away as captives, and later on forced to enlist in the
Prussian army. A month later, May, 1793, the act of doing
homage and swearing fealty to the Prussian King was carried
through by hisorders. Dignitaries came from Berlin to repre-
sent him, and receive the subjection of the city.47
Thus did Dantzig come into Prussian hands. Without
delay there began a forcible suppression of the ancient
republican institutions of the city, which had been so prized
hitherto and fostered by Poland. Then also began an
enforced modelling of the city in conformity with the
bureaucratic pattern of the other Prussian municipalities.
The magistracy was set up on a basis truly and purely official
and hierarchical. Faint traces only were left of representation
for the merchants and the guilds. Above all, the “ jacobin ”
Third Committee was of course utterly abolished. The
first step of the enlightened Prussian administration went
in the direction of obliterating this truly democratic
institution, which had remained in Dantzig, the heirloom ~
of the Republic. But the city nobility, composed of the
better elements of the merchant and educated classes, felt
keenly too the hard fist of Berlin bureaucracy. Many
illustrious men of the city laid down their office in the City
Government, the Courts, and the School Board, by way
of protest against the Prussian intruder. Some even pre-
ferred, not minding the material loss involved, to leave
their native city for ever, now that it had fallen under a
foreign lord, This, among others, was the course followed
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 55
by the parents Schopenhauer, as we learn from the memoirs
of Joanna, already mentioned, which are full of bitterness
at the recollection.
For a time men deceived themselves with the hope of
being delivered from the Prussian yoke. But these hopes,
originally raised by the triumph of the French Revolution,
soon vanished with the conclusion of the Treaty of Basle
between France and Prussia.
In spite of this there was formed a few years later an
actual conspiracy in Dantzig against the Prussians. This, if
not actually organized by the Polish Emigration in Paris and
Dombrowski’s Legions, was at any rate in close sympathy
with them. A handful of students, with the ardent Bartholdy
at their head, took up the watchwords of the French
Revolution, gathered secretly a few mariners, dockers, and
working-men from the harbour, and resolved to raise the
standard of armed revolt (1797). Their hope was to restore
the former republican liberties of the city.#
Even soberer citizens were incited into the conspiracy, men
like Father Richter, Deacon of the Church of St. Catherine,
‘known for his irreconcilable attitude to the Prussian Govern-
ment. The outbreak was fixed for the same Thursday of
Passion Week 1797, as it was the anniversary of the recent
battle in the streets as well as of the Kosciuszko Insurrection
in Warsaw. The conspirators, provided with arms and
republican colours, were gathered in the house of Bartholdy.
They were to hurl themselves on the Prussian pickets, call
the populace to revolt, and get possession of the city and
fortress. This childish plot was discovered by the Prussian
police. The youthful conspirators were condemned to death
in the courts, but the verdict was commuted to.a long term
of imprisonment.
Under auspices none too promising, auspices such as these,
the Prussian administration of Dantzig began. The new
monarch, Frederic William II, preferred not to show himself
in the city he had fought for so long, in view of the openly
hostile temper of the people. When his successor, the young
Frederic William III, came to Dantzig in 1798 with his beau-
tiful Queen Louisa, he met with a cool reception from the
citizens, in spite of official celebrations and festivals, Nor did
he do anything useful, as had always happened when the
56 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Polish sovereigns had been welcomed in triumph to Dantzig.
He gave no heed to the bitter complaints as to the complete
violation of the ancient rights and institutions of the city.
With one cheap and questionable benefaction he was
content, when he bestowed on certain of the officials of
the city, who belonged to the new magistracy, and were most
inclined to the Prussian regime, the German nobleman’s
rank, adding the ‘‘ von” to their ancient Dantzig names.
This titular favour was characteristic of the relations main-
tained between the authorities in Berlin and Republican
Dantzig.
It should be stated, too, that the city did not suffer harm
in material respects during the short thirteen years of
Prussian rule. Rather did the improvement of Dantzig’s
trade, which had already manifested itself under the
Great Diet, continue under Prussian auspices. Especially
did the export of grain during this time advance with strides,
so that in 1802 it reached the long since unknown figures
of 85,000 measures.
This reacted naturally upon the prosperity of the city.
But it was not at all thanks to the Prussian administration,
because the latter from the very start made itself felt in
the sphere of commerce through its fiscal and bureaucratic
tyrannies. It was simply the result of three positive factors.
First, Prussia did not at the time possess any ports, except
the infinitely worse situated and mal-administered cities
of Stettin, Koenigsberg and Memel, which could help in
crushing Dantzig by competition. Secondly, in view of the
still raging war of the French Revolution and Napoleon with
the Coalition in Europe, England, Austria, and Russia, the
Kingdom of Prussia, which had withdrawn from the conflict
after the Treaty of Basle, was the chiefest, if not the only,
source of supply for both parties. Thirdly, and this was
the most important fact, after the inclusion of the heart
of Poland with Warsaw in Prussia, in virtue of the Second
and Third Partitions, the Prussian sources of supply were
first and foremost the Polish lands.
If, then, during this period, the last years of the eighteenth
and the first of the nineteenth century, the exports of Dantzig,
especially of grain, were kept at a high level, it was just for
the reason that the city remained, in spite of the Partitions,
THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION 57
in intimate touch with Prussian Warsaw; and that in
spite of Prussian bondage it remained, as before, a part of
the Polish commercial market, which. was so profitable to
it. Yet, discounting all this, that bondage was a terrible
burden both to the whole Prussian part of Poland, to the
capital Warsaw, and to the City of Dantzig. Whether here
or there, the longing after deliverance was the same.
V
A FREE CITY
THE hour of Dantzig’s deliverance struck at last, when
Napoleon, after beating the Prussians at Jena, halted his
army upon Polish soil. Having come to set Warsaw free
from German hands, the Emperor turned his special atten-
tion at once upon Dantzig ; and in January he gave the first
orders as to its investment. Marshal Lefebvre, to waom,
at the head of the Tenth Corps of the Grand Army, the task”
was assigned, had the help of the best organized divisions
of the Polish army, which was then being formed. This
help included the Third Polish Division, that of General
Dombrowski, creator of the Legions in Italy; the Polish
Northern Legion under Prince Michael Radziwill ; and regi-
ments of regular horse, volunteers from the nobility, and
the newly formed military units of Posen and Kalish, under
Colonel Dziewanowski and Generals Kosinski and Sokolnicki.
The task was an extraordinarily hard one. After the
previous year’s triumph over Prussia, the present “ first
Polish campaign ’’ of Napoleon (1806-07) promised to be
a heavy one. It was carried on against fresh Russian
armies allied to the Prussian remnants, and was marked
at the start by the bloody encounter of Eylau, almost a
disaster to the French army. Meanwhile Dantzig was well
provisioned. The Governor, Count Kalckreuth, had a garrison
of 17,000 Prussians, 3,000 Russian foot, and three Cossack
regiments. He had also access to the sea, from which, as
it was wholly in the hands of the Allies, reinforcements kept
arriving. Finally there were available the Russian corps
of General Kamenskoi, with 6,000 men, and_ several
thousand Prussians under General Buelow. Thus altogether
there were over 30,000 troops defending the city.
58
A FREE CITY | 59
On the other hand, Napoleon, after the serious losses of
Eylau, could not send more than 12,000 men to the Tenth
Corps before Dantzig ; and there were added later hardly
as many more, apart from the divisions lent for a time from
the corps of Marshal Lannes and Mortier.
More than once during the siege even the energetic
Lefebvre had his moments of despair and doubt as to the
issue of the whole matter. Napoleon always roused him,
however, in lively and even sharp fashion. The Emperor
displayed in his whole correspondence with Lefebvre unusual
interest in the undertaking, and full knowledge of the minutest
details of the situation about the city. At the end of April,
1807, he rode to Marienburg, the ancient Crusader strong-
hold, which he had taken, as heir of the Polish Kings. It
appears that he saw Lefebvre in person there, and gave him
oral instructions. In any case, as a distinguished Prussian
historian of this war, who is now a prominent Staff-officer,
tells us, direct and telling orders of the Emperor in regard to
the siege exercised a virtually decisive influence on the capture
of the city. More than that, this competent military expert
is of opinion that “ the importance of Dantzig for the great
undertakings ’’ was not appreciated fully either by Frederic
_ William III nor yet by Lefebvre, but only by Napoleon.
The Poles took a major part in the operations, and carried
off the honours in the actual capture of Dantzig. They
represented a quite presentable fraction of the relatively
slender army of investment. They numbered in all some
6,500 men. When Dombrowski, being wounded at Dirschau,
laid down his command of the Polish Division, it was taken
over by the valiant if old and hunch-backed Lieutenant-
General Gielgud. These Polish units, hastily gathered, and
improvised as they were, left much to be desired in point of
organization, and even the most necessary things, such as
arms, uniforms, and food, were lacking. Many had only
light military overcoats, and beneath them any sort of
clothing. The poor fellows suffered cruelly from cold, rain,
often from hunger, being in the trenches before the city
during the worst season of the year.49
The siege of the city proper, apart from preliminaries
in February, began in March, and the cannonade in earnest
in April, 1807. One must remember that the position of
60 DANTZIG AND POLAND
the French army after Eylau was far from favourable and
its temper rather depressed.
In spite of all this, the Poles, speedily ridding themselves
of occasional distempers at the start, not only did their duty
at Dantzig, “‘ holding the very centre of the line of assault,”
on the ‘‘ most dangerous and most important station,’ but
even by their endurance, firmness, and impetus they came
to be the pick of Lefebvre’s army. The Marshal soon knew
their value, and loved them. In his daily orders he did
them justice repeatedly, giving honourable mention to
their officers and privates. Once indeed, when an enemy’s
sally from the city was being repulsed, he dismounted
from his horse, unbuttoned his coat in order to show his
Marshal’s embroidery and stars, and at the head of
Downarowicz’s Polish battalion, himself led a _ splendid
counter-attack, snatching the drum from the drummer’s
own hands.
The consciousness that they were fighting for a Polish
Dantzig and a Polish sea-front served above all to maintain
the high level of courage among the Polish troops. More
than one fine expression of this feeling was given. The
anniversary of the Constitution of the Third of May was
solemnly celebrated in the lines. In a fiery speech delivered
on this occasion by Father Przybylski, Chaplain of the
First Infantry Regiment, Prince Sulkowski’s, the men were
reminded of “‘ the waving banner of Poland on the shores
of the Baltic.’”’ Time and again in the appeals and reports
of Dombrowski, Gielgud, and their subordinates around
Dantzig, this notion of their efforts and fights being a
way of emancipation is most clearly emphasized.
But from the other side, and in Dantzig itself, the great
majority of the citizens saw for the first time in the siege
of their city an act of justice and emancipation. Con-
vinced of this in their souls, these loyal patriots for the first
time took almost no part in the defence. The Prussian
Royal Family, fleeing from Berlin after the disaster at
Jena, thought for a time of seeking shelter behind the
city’s walls; but in view of the cool attitude of the
inhabitants they thought it better after a short stay to
flee still farther to Koenigsberg and Memel. They obviously
realized that it was not possible at least for Hohenzollerns
A FREE CITY 61
to expect such affection and shelter from the people of
the city as Stanislaw Leszczynski once enjoyed.
The effort made later by Count Krockow to form in Dantzig
a corps of volunteers for Prussia met with complete failure.
The Count himself for that matter soon fell into the hands
of the besieging Polish troops. Equally unsuccessful were
the appeals of the Governor Kalckreuth for loyal generosity
on the city’s part towards Prussia. On the other hand, the
real temper of the inhabitants is revealed by the fact that
he had to take special measures of precaution for the Thursday
of Passion Week, 1807, through fear of riots on that memor-
able anti-Teutonic and.anti-Prussian anniversary.
Worse still, the citizens maintained secret communica-
tions with the Polish outposts, furnishing necessary infor-
mation and assisting the privates of the garrison to desert.
This was so common that, according to Gielgud’s figures,
“over 4,000 Prussian deserters, Poles and Germans, passed
through the Polish line, of whom 700 Poles enlisted volun-
tarily in our regiments.”
“As far as the citizens of Dantzig are concerned,’ wrote
Colonel Krukowiecki, who was in command of the first rank
of Polish outposts, “ they are all of good cheer, and await
impatiently the moment when the beneficent hand of our
saviour (Napoleon) will set them free from the Prussians
and Muscovites.”’
The last serious effort to relieve Dantzig from the sea
side was made at the beginning of May, with the landing
of considerable Russian and Prussian reinforcements at
the mouth of the Vistula. The valiant and successful repulse
of this peril by the Polish troops represents their finest and
most meritorious performance during the whole siege. It
made the speedy surrender of the city inevitable. The fight
was of the bloodiest and fiercest, as the Poles and French
gave no quarter, and victory had to be bought by heavy
losses. Here in this battle the young and gallant Colonel
Anthony Parys fell, shot through the breast by a rifle bullef
as he was leading his regiment to a final charge. He was a
splendid officer of the Polish Legions in Italy, and the true
hero of the present struggle for Dantzig.
On the spot where he fell his companions threw up a mound
and held a solemn funeral in his honour. The illustrious
62 DANTZIG AND POLAND
writer and patriot Prince Alexander Sapieha, who was a
member of Gielgud’s staff, exclaimed at the funeral, in the
presence of the city, which still held out:
Heroic Race oF Porss!
The weakness of our fathers has not availed to erase the
glory of their ancestors. Turn your gaze from this hill whither a
holy ceremony has led us. Look upon Dantzig, for whose restora-
tion to the motherland you are fighting. Fix your eyes in this
direction to the endless plains of Pomerania, torn from us by treachery.
For centuries we cherished this land in safety. . . . Ye see this moving
element, the stretches of the Baltic which the eye cannot measure.
That was our possession during the time of the Sigmunds. Polish
vessels ploughed its surface, and brought abundance into our land
by flourishing trade.
All this glory our ancestors handed over to their children, and
it is now your task to recover what the carelessness of the latter let
slip. . . . We have piled up this mound with our hands. . . . Perhaps
some day, when fortune ceases to harass us, Poles will recover their
former possessions, and surrounded by their children will point to
this grave as an evidence of our deeds, and as a lesson of how much it
cost to bring a fallen nation to a new birth.°?
The names of Parys and of many other Poles who took
part in these battles, and received in return the generous
mark of the French Legion of Honour, were mentioned
with high distinction in the bulletins of the Grand Army
at the end of the siege and capture of Dantzig. In fact, at
the end of May, a few days after the unsuccessful attempt
at relief, the capitulation followed. Scarcely a month
passed from the proper commencement of the siege before
all was over. It is a notable fact that of all the investments
of Dantzig the shortest was this one, in which the city was
taken from the Prussians.
Marshal Lefebvre, by way of doing homage to the Poles,
assigned them the place of honour when the city was occupied,
both because of their proved valour and because they had
the real right to the city. At the solemn entry into the city
through the High Gate on the morning of May 27, 1807,
the Marshal, surrounded by his suite, led the way in a blaze
of decorations, and right behind, in full parade, with a band
playing at its head, the Polish Legion followed. The six
regiments of French infantry brought up the rear.
The capture of Dantzig was an event of the first rank,
A FREE CITY 63
not only military but also political. It finely restored the
position of the Grand Army, and made possible the decisive
victory at Friedland a few weeks later. Napoleon, aware
beyond all others of the significance of the event, expressed
his personal satisfaction to Lefebvre in a beautiful letter,
granting him the dignity of “‘ Duke of Dantzig.”’ 5
In those very days of triumph the Emperor made his
entry into Dantzig. Welcomed cordially by the inhabi-
tants, as were the Polish kings of yore, he took up his
residence in Langgarten. He inspected with care the chief
institutions of the city, the fortress of the Vistula, the
Neufahrwasser harbour. He received in special audience
representatives of the council and the merchant-class. He
took from their hands a memorial, which set forth the sore
crimes suffered at the hands of the Prussian Government
from the time of the First Partition. He showed special
satisfaction towards the Polish besieging forces. A review
was held on the Long Square. He covered them with proofs
of his favour and appreciation.
As a matter of fact Dantzig was won largely at the price
of Polish blood. The aged General Gielgud emphasizes this
in his report made to the Emperor. ‘“ The Third Polish
_Division,” so he wrote, ‘‘ which I had the honour to com-
mand, came to the blockade of Dantzig with 6,500 men
under arms. Asa result of the labours of the siege and the
losses sustained in skirmishes and in the trenches, it numbers
now but 4,650 men.” The Polish losses were thus some
two thousand.
“ The inhabitants of the city,’’ he went on,”“‘ are Poles.
They are imbued with the spirit of loyalty and admiration
for Your Imperial and Royal Majesty, as well as with feelings
of love for their former motherland, when Poland was still
a united nation.”’
At that time neither the future of the city was certain,
nor yet the issue of the war itself. Nevertheless it was
generally taken for granted that, with the triumph of
Napoleon and the reconstitution of Poland, Dantzig should
be returned to her motherland. Such was too the general
opinion of Warsaw. It was to be expected that the first
news of the taking of Dantzig by the Franco-Polish army
should give rise to universal enthusiasm in the capital.
64 DANTZIG AND POLAND
“The news was the occasion of such great rejoicing in
Warsaw that on the very day it came all the houses in the
city were illumined, though no such order had been given
by the authorities. ... On all the streets were to be heard
the glad cheers : ‘‘ Long live the great Napoleon, the deliverer
of Dantzig!’’ At once the President of the Warsaw Pro-
visional Regency Commission, the grey-haired Malachowski,
who had been Marshal of the Great Diet, prepared a letter
to the Emperor asking for the assignation, or rather the
restoration, “‘of the city of Dantzig and all the parts of
Poland round about her ’’—i.e. Royal Prussia and Polish
Pomerania—to the Polish State in the hour of its
re-birth.5?
Nevertheless, things were to turn out quite differently.
When a little later, after the victory of Friedland, the Peace
of Tilsit was concluded between Napoleon and Czar Alex-
ander, the latter’s rooted opposition served above all to make
the reconstitution of a large and powerful Poland impossible.
The result was the mangled Duchy of Warsaw as a com-
promise, without Royal Prussia and Pomerania, and without
Dantzig. By the Treaty of Tilsit of July, 1807, Dantzig,
with the territory round about to a radius of sixteen kilo-
metres, was declared a free and independent city. At the
same time the free use of the Vistula was guaranteed. In
December, thanks to the kind mediation of the French
Marshal Soult, the boundaries were somewhat extended by
a supplementary agreement made in Elbing between Dantzig
and Prussia.53
Though left nominally under the joint care of Prussia
and Saxony-Warsaw, Dantzig actually was at the immediate
disposition of Napoleon himself, whose bust in marble took
the place in the Town Hall formerly occupied by that of
Frederic William. The city was given a French garrison
and a French commander, General Rapp. A considerable
war contribution, with numerous supplementary payments,
was levied in the interests of the French Treasury. In return
the town got back its constitution and the machinery of
self-government : the Three Committees, the Council called
officially from now on the Senate, its own courts, repre-
sentations of the four “ quarters,’ etc. At the Emperor's
command, however, the Code Napoléon was introduced.
A FREE CITY 65
The citizens managed to get this greatly delayed and make
it only an auxiliary institution.54
Besides the Governor, the resident French agent, Massias,
held office, and afterwards also the Saxon-Warsaw one,
Helbig. There were in addition quartered here, rather
for purposes of espionage, the Prussian Consul Vegesack
and the Russian Trefurt. The people of Dantzig had their
official deputation now in Paris, as formerly in Warsaw,
together with a permanent envoy with power to act, Kahlen,
who had been the representative to the Republic of Poland
in Warsaw of old, and was now the same for Napoleon. It
is worthy of note that recommendations kept being made
by the Emperor to the Dantzig delegates, just as formerly
by the Kings Sigmund and Sobieski, to the effect that the
city should admit Catholics to its offices and its adminis-
tration.
_ From the autumn of 1808 the garrison in Dantzig was
composed of two Polish regiments of foot of the Duchy of
Warsaw. The commander was General Grabowski, who in
the next year succeeded Rapp as Governor, the latter being
placed on the Emperor’s staff for the Austrian campaign
of 1809. After Grabowski, the duties of commander were
performed for a time by General Woyczynski. The rela-
tions of the citizens with the Polish garrison and the Polish
commanders were always of the best. In 1810 Prince
Joseph Poniatowski, War Minister and Commander-in-Chief
of the army of the Duchy of Warsaw, came to Dantzig to
inspect the garrison and the fortress. He was received by
the city with great honours, as nephew of the late King
Stanislaw August and the most popular of Poles, and with
the respect always shown to the royal Polish line.
In accordance with Napoleon’s own orders and in agree-
ment with the military authorities in Warsaw, headlong
efforts were being made all this time to strengthen the
fortifications of the city. In the spring of 1811, after the
first misunderstandings between the Czar and Napoleon,
Dantzig was placed under a state of siege, as it was especially
threatened from Russian quarters. On the outbreak of the
great war with Russia, Napoleon, on his way to Moscow,
visited Dantzig for the second time in June, 1812, in order
with his own eyes to verify the state of its defences. It
5
66 DANTZIG AND POLAND
was to be one of the chief bases for all further operations
against Moscow. This time also he received in a long audience
representatives of the city authorities and the merchants.
With the penetration and simplicity peculiar to him, he
questioned them in detail as to their needs and burdens,
as well as about the actual industrial position of their free
city, which he had called back to life and retained under
his protection.55
The position of Dantzig during this protectorate left,
it is true, very much to be desired. The six years of Napo-
leon’s rule had brought it to the verge of ruin. Its trade
had wholly ceased. Many of the oldest and richest of its
financial houses had become beggared, bankruptcies were
numerous, the artisans had no work, and the working-
classes were in misery. The people kept themselves alive
with grants from the army or work at the fortifications.
It suffices to note that the population of the city with the
surrounding district was diminished by one-fourth. It had
been over 80,000, and was now only 64,000.56
The causes of this disastrous situation were many. The
contributions and numerous military levies of the French
were a sore burden to the city. The blockade of the con-
tinent was infinitely more harmful. Instituted six months
before the capture of Dantzig, by the famous Berlin Decree
(1806), which declared the British Isles to be in a state of
blockade, it cut the city off from its chief customers and
providers overseas. Both imports and exports were as good
as finished for Dantzig. Neither the Emperor’s “ licences ”’
granted to the citizens, nor exceptional vessels and ladings,
could help the matter, nor yet the spread of contraband.
Chiefest of all, the Tilsit solution itself of the question of
Dantzig and Poland, forced upon Napoleon by Alexander,
was absolutely mistaken, absurd, both hurtful for Poland
and ruinous for Dantzig. : |
The so-called ‘‘ free city,” cut off by West Prussia from
Poland, found itself in virtually the same position, and with-
out escape, as after the First Partition. Rather the position
was even worse than after the Third Partition, when Dantzig
had at least been reunited with Warsaw, beneath the
Prussian yoke it is true, but at least under one single
regime. To return to her natural and historical state-
A FREE CITY 67
unity with a free Poland, as one of the most splendid
of Polish cities, a city animated with a fulness of life, and
not to vegetate as a fancied free city in an artificial separa-
tion and isolation from her—this has been and will be
the highest political injunction imposed on Dantzig both
by nature and by history. Indeed, the most striking proofs
of this are furnished by the lamentable experiences of the
free city during the Napoleonic era.
Meanwhile the tragic end of this epoch was approaching.
The disastrous retreat from Moscow followed. Rapp, who
had been taken again by the Emperor on that luckless
expedition, returned to Dantzig in December, 1812, half
alive, with face and hands frozen, but full of energy. He
at once declared that the city was in a state of war.
Already the Russian army was following close on the
heels of the retiring remnants of the Grand Army. True,
no one in Alexander’s army headquarters had settled the
matter at this juncture (New Year, 1813) how far the vic-
torious pursuit was to be pushed. In the most approved
circles of Russian politics, and just because Napoleon was
in such desperate straits, it was not thought in the least
desirable for Alexander to pursue his foe to France itself.
Such an expedition would have had the appearance of
advantage for Russia, but would have meant in reality the
reconstitution of Prussia.
Kutuzow, the Russian Commander-in-Chief, was decidedly
of opinion that a stop should be made at the Vistula, that
an alliance with Prussia was undesirable, as was also further
fighting pour le roi de Prusse. He wanted, on the other
hand, to come to terms with Napoleon and make peace on
the best conditions for Russia. The Chancellor Rumianzeff
was of the same opinion, as was also almost the whole suite
and the “ general public sentiment” of Russia. In the
same way a modern Russian historian and military expert,
after weighing the whole military and political situation
of that time, came to the conclusion that precisely this
and no other solution suited “‘ the real interests ”’ of Russia.
Thus, then, these best possible conditions of peace, of
which Kutuzow was thinking, and which were not hard to
obtain from Napoleon in view of his position, involved not
only the uniting of the whole Duchy of Warsaw to Russia,
68 DANTZIG AND POLAND
but also the gaining of the line of the Vistula from end to
end. This meant at once the incorporation of the whole
of East Prussia. The situation seemed once more the same
as it was in the time of Czarina Elizabeth, when striking
at Frederic the Great. As a matter of fact, just as in the
former time, this whole province of Prussia was actually now
in Russian hands.
According to a competent eye-witness, Field-Marshal
Boyen, a Prussian who conferred with Czar Alexander at
the end of 1812, the Russian military party demanded un-
conditionally the Vistula as a boundary-line. ‘‘ They were
ready at this price to leave the rest of Europe to Napoleon,
or to even the devil himself.” 57
The whole latter part of the Moscow campaign, the escape
of Napoleon, the slowing-up in his pursuit, is all virtually
explained by the above secret calculation of Russia. In
point of fact it looked seriously as if the calculation were
to be realized. In January, 1813, the Russian Generals
Tchernisheff and Rydygier took Koenigsberg. Here a
highly curious regime was begun, without the least regard
for Frederic William III, and beneath the most serene
authority of the Czar Alexander himself, just as of yore under
Czarina Elizabeth. The Russian military Governor, Marquis
Paulucci, had taken Memel even earlier, abolished the Prus-
sian administration, taken over the treasury, and simply
instituted a Russian government.
The question of Dantzig was closely connected with
these important events. There can be no doubt that the
Russian plans at the end of 1812 and during the greater
part of 1813 had one aim in view—to get possession of
Dantzig and either simply retain it or, in the worst case,
leave it with the status of a free city as the Peace of Tilsit
had done. There would, of course, be one difference—that
the protector would be Alexander and not Napoleon.
In fact, Kutuzow, in a very remarkable ordinance
addressed to General Wittgenstein, advised him to remove
the Prussian troops from Dantzig and use for its investment
only Russian units. The result was that in January, 1813,
after the city was surrounded, the Cossack Commander
Platow was in charge, whilst in February Wittgenstein, and
to the end of April General Lewis, directed the operations.
A FREE CITY 69
In May Prince Alexander of Wiirtemberg, Military Governor
of White Russia, the born uncle of the Czar himself, was sent
straight from the Russian headquarters. The choice of such
a distinguished personage, as well as the increase of the
besieging army to well over 30,000 men, were a clear indi-
cation of the importance attached in the immediate entourage
of the Czar to his getting control of Dantzig himself.
Frederic William, too, easily scented the danger, and
gave orders already in April ‘‘ to make all thinkable efforts ”’
to send to the siege of Dantzig Prussian divisions, whose
very presence would be a kind of pledge of Prussia’s claims
to the city. A weak division of Prussian ‘‘ Landwehr,”
numbering a few thousand men, under the leadership of Count
Dohna, was brought together, and it was sent in June “to
the help”’ of Prince Wiirtemberg.
The Russian Commander naturally received the uninvited
“help” in the most ungracious manner. He looked down
on them, issued orders to them in Russian, just as to his
“crews of reserves,” but set them regularly in the rear,
etc. Thus there was played out under the walls of Dant-
zig a strange tragedy-comedy, part political, part military,
between the Prussian troops, who outdid themselves in their
importunate eagerness, and the Russian Commander, who
turned the cold shoulder mercilessly to their proffered
services. |
This last siege of Dantzig, in the year 1813, when, as
in 1734, it was beset and finally taken by victorious Russian —
armies, was once again nothing less than a tragedy alike for
Dantzig and France and Poland. Again Polish and French
troops defended the city in her bitter need. It was infinitely
important for Napoleon that Dantzig should hold out as
long as possible—‘ that walled palladium of France on far-
away reaches ”—as it would be for him a solid point d’appur
in case of a more fortunate turn of events.
Yet the garrison gathered now in the city, the Tenth
Corps of the Grand Army, was nought but a collection of
frozen, wounded, and exhausted wrecks of men, survivors
of the fearful catastrophe of Moscow. It was a “ heap
of invalids,” numbering nominally over 35,000 men, of
whom, however, the greater part—up to 18,000—at once
went into hospital, and soon died almost to the last man.
70 DANTZIG AND POLAND
There were thus in truth never more than some 13,000 to
14,000 men fit to bear arms. It was the most complete
medley of people—French, Bavarians, Dutch, Westphalians,
Spaniards, Italians, and even Africans.
1 Next to the French, the stoutest element of defence
which was to be found in the garrison, was the Poles. The
Seventh Polish Division was there, under the command of
Brigadier-General Prince Michael Radziwill. There were three
regiments of foot, the Fifth, the Ninth, and the Eleventh,
which had taken a brilliant part in the capture of Dantzig
six years before, and were now called upon to defend it.
There was the Ninth Regiment of Polish Lancers, which
had just shed its blood liberally and distinguished itself
in the Moscow expedition. Finally, there were two companies
of foot and one of horse artillery, and a company of sappers.
This made a total of 6,000 men, virtually half of the whole
garrison that was able to fight. All were splendid soldiers,
resolved to defend the ancient Polish city to the last.
Of course the Russian besiegers on their part under-
took vigorous steps the moment the city was invested, to
demoralize and win over precisely this stoutest Polish element
of the garrison. The Russian Commander himself prepared
a proclamation urging the Poles to desertion and treachery.
At the same time a falsified appeal was issued, supposed
to be that ‘of the citizens of Warsaw to their brethren
in the field.”” In this proclamation the people of Warsaw
adjured and challenged all Poles under arms in general,
and those defending Dantzig in particular, ‘‘ by the sacred-
ness of their faith and of their fatherland,” to leave the
standard of the atheistic and crime-committing Napoleon
and to place themselves at once under the protection of
“the great Czar, Alexander the Magnificent,” and of “ the
great Russian nation,” akin to the Poles in blood, in language,
and in near neighbourhood.
This singular appeal, written for the rest in curiously bad
Polish and full of Russianisms, was naturally a wretched
counterfeit. As a matter of fact, Warsaw, when captured
at the beginning of February, 1813, by the Russian armies, |
maintained generally a patriotic and hostile attitude to its
conquerors. Instead of urging people to desert, she did
exactly the opposite. Her whole soul was with the Polish
A FREE CITY 71
army fighting in the field under Prince Poniatowski and
holding loyally to France and to Napoleon. All the same,
the moment the Russian armies approached Dantzig, Cossack
officers sent by Platow put in an appearance among the
Polish outposts and began to fraternize. When they were
hustled out they ride away, scattering among the troops a
host of the proclamations above mentioned.
The Governor, Rapp, was equal to the occasion, acting
like a soldier and to the point. He wrote up the whole
incident in the Dantzig Gazette, ordered the counterfeit
appeal ‘“‘ from Warsaw ”’ to be printed word for word, and
bade it be read everywhere publicly to the assembled Polish
regiments. The result was that the troops rejected with
indignation the Russian request, and took a solemn oath
to hold out unfailingly in the defence of Dantzig, France
and Napoleon.
They issued further a written declaration, edited by
Captain Wladislaw Ostrowski, who was then at the head
of the Polish Horse Artillery at Dantzig. He defended the
city gallantly, and became in 1831 the zealous Marshal of
the famed Revolutionary Diet in Warsaw. The declaration
recalled the Partitions of Poland, the massacre of Praga,
the injuries without number suffered from the Powers who
had divided the land, especially from Russia, and ended
with a pledge “ of love of country and gratitude to Napoleon.”
This declaration, which was handed to Rapp by Prince
Radziwill and the Polish Staff, was signed by “the
generals and senior officers, the commanders, the officers
and non-commissioned, as well as the privates of the Fifth,
Tenth, and Eleventh Regiments of Foot, the Ninth
Regiment of Lancers, the commander, officers, non-commis-
sioned and privates of the Foot and Horse Artillery. and
of the Sappers” in Dantzig. This eloquent pledge was
confirmed by the Poles time after time by their splendid
deeds. During the first attack made in earnest by Lewis
on the city early in March, 1813, the Russian columns
advancing to storm the place were scattered, thanks
chiefly to the furious charge of the Polish Brigade. The
grateful Rapp appeared from that time in the red cap of
a Polish Confederate and often in full Polish uniform.
The conditions of the still continuing siege grew day by
72 DANTZIG AND POLAND
day more desperate. Beneath the enemy’s fire, under the
influence of hunger, typhus, and insidious tales from without,
the spirits of the men kept sinking always the more. When
treachery was creeping into the city and among the Allies,
only the Poles remained true to their duty, to their leader,
their nation, and to Europe, loyal to the end here, just ‘as
on the field of Leipsic under Poniatowski. Nearly half of
them—some 2,500—died, either falling on the ramparts or
dying in the city hospitals.
At length, a month after the Battle of Leipsic, when he
had exhausted his means of defence and there was now no
more hope, Rapp signed a deed of surrender on honourable
terms at the end of November, 1813. He was to leave the
city with his garrison on New Year’ s Day, 1814, if no relief
came before that time.
By the deed of surrender the Poles of the garrison were
guaranteed the choice either of marching out and making
their way to Napoleon’s armies or of returning home. Alex-
ander, however, for reasons which did him no credit, refused
to ratify the terms. He ordered the French, together with
their Commander, to be taken prisoners and sent off into
the depths of Russia. The Poles were allowed to return to
Warsaw, but without their arms.58
At ten o'clock in the morning of New Year’s Day, 1814,
some 3,000 Polish troops, with 230 officers, marched out of
Dantzig by the Oliva Gate, under the command of Radziwill.
They had their arms with them, but laid them down a league
outside the walls. This was the last Polish garrison to take
leave of the Polish Dantzig for over a century.
The Prussians, who were keeping a suspicious eye on the
Prince of Wiirtemberg, were deeply alarmed at the news
of the surrender of the city, a transaction arranged by the
French Governor with the Russian Commander, of course
without any thought for Berlin. At once they informed
their King that the Russian Staff was resolved to level the
fortifications of Dantzig, not to restore it to the Prussian
crown, but to declare it a free city. At the same time they
denounced “ certain gentlemen of the Senate of Dantzig,
who certainly desire a return of the city’s former glory and
exert an influence on some important persons here,’ i.e.
in the Russian headquarters, Frederic William sent an order
A FREE CITY 73
forthwith naming General Massenbach as Governor and
Colonel Dohna as Commander of the city.
Now, however, as the Prussian historian of the fortress
of Dantzig expresses it, a “catastrophe” followed. The
Prince of Wiirtemberg declared outright that he had no
intention of obeying the King’s orders, that he awaited
the orders of the Czar, and that duty bade him consider
above everything else the interests of his master and Russia.
For the rest he added quite openly that in his opinion “ the
question of Dantzig is inseparably bound up with that of
Poland.”
The Russians, then, the day. after the Franco-Polish
garrison left the place, entered Dantzig themselves. The
keys were sent to the Czar. Lieutenant-General Prince
Wolkonski became Governor of the city and General Rach-
manow the Commander. The Prussians were excluded
wholly both from the military and the civilian administra-
tion. Permission was given them to man just the inner
Heugarten Gate, between the Bishop’s Hill and the Hagels-
berg.
Sharp differences soon resulted. A violent scene took
place between the Prince and the Prussian Generals. Count
Dohna was bold enough to post up printed proclamations
in the city on his own authority as “Commander.” But
these were torn down at once, and that possibly by the
people themselves, who, as the confidential reports of Major
Hake to the Prussian King inform us, demonstrated in a
clear manner their hatred of the Prussian authorities. The
Prince of Wiirtemberg threatened Dohna himself with
arrest. For a month the Russians were sole lords of
Dantzig, and made themselves at home in the city. Thus,
at least for the short period of January, 1814, the old Russian
longings of Peter and Elizabeth for the city were fulfilled.
Nevertheless the Prussians did not neglect their business.
From the moment when, renouncing Napoleon, they joined
the Coalition again, they undertook with great diligence
the regaining of Dantzig. In February of 1813, on the first
negotiations of Frederic William with the Czar as his ally,
the Prussian demanded that Russia bind herself to restore
Dantzig to him. Alexander demurred at the time, and in
the joint agreement of Breslau-Kalish between Prussia
74 DANTZIG AND POLAND
and Russia, he made no mention of the city at all. Nor did
he cease demurring in the matter, for one or another reason,
during the whole spring and autumn campaign of 1813.
Even in October, after the Battle of Leipzig, he broached
the idea through one of his diplomats of leaving Dantzig
as a free city, or in any case not letting Prussia get it
back.
But both the Prussian diplomats and the King himself
kept assailing the Czar in this delicate matter with ever-
increasing insistence. Unfortunately, too, they got the
support of the British representative in the Allied camp,
Lord Castlereagh, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
who took a most perverted view of the Dantzig question,
as indeed of that of Poland as a whole. Castlereagh, by
the suggestions of the Prussian Cabinet, was daily kept in
dread of the Russian peril, and recalling the mistaken and
now out-of-date initiative of Pitt of twenty years previously,
he declared himself favourable to the restoration of Dantzig
to Prussia.
In the face of this Alexander could not resist further.
When, then, on his victorious way to France, he received in
Basle the news of the surrender of the city to the Prince
of Wiirtemberg, he gave orders that it be restored again to
Prussia. These orders reached Dantzig at the beginning
of February, 1814, and were carried out forthwith. Thus
the Prussians got possession of Dantzig once more, and that
for a full century. 59
Nevertheless, in spite of the Czar’s orders and the act
of Prussia in again taking over the city, the fundamental
question of its title to Dantzig remained still an unsettled
one. It was a matter for the whole of Europe, which, just
like all the others growing out of the division of the lands
taken from Napoleon, and of his abdication and the capture
of Paris, had to be settled finally by the General Congress
of the Nations in Vienna. It was on this that the unhappy
people of Dantzig set their last feeble expectations. For
these experienced and stubborn citizens, just as in the days
of Frederic William III, or with Frederic the Great, shud-
dered at the thought of coming again under the rule of
Prussia.
They did not at all admit themselves beaten. They did
A FREE CITY 75
everything they could to prevent their again falling into
Prussian hands. As indicated, the resident representative
in Paris, “‘ deputy of the city of Dantzig at the Emperor’s
Court,” in Napoleon’s time was first the patron of Dantzig
Kahlen, and after his death in r811, his friend Dr. Keidel,
a resourceful and energetic man, born in Bremen. The
Senate of Dantzig, through its closed Committee of five
senators, foreseeing the fall of Napoleon and an upheaval
in Europe, worked out secret instructions for Keidel imme-
diately after the disastrous retreat from Moscow.
These instructions, under the date of Januafy, 1813,
set forth on the eve of a reconstitution of Europe the essential
demands of Dantzig. The return of the city under the
Prussian sceptre was entirely excluded, as the greatest of
evils, a thing quite inadmissible. But in the same way
the Constitution of the city of 1807 as a free city was declared
to be unsuccessful and undesirable for the future. For this
situation led, so the report declared, to similar lamentable
results for the city as had been experienced from 1772 to
1793, while it was cut off from Poland. Those grievous
experiences proved that Dantzig could not maintain itself
as a free city, even though all its sovereign rights were
guaranteed. Thus, then, the instructions ended, the best
solution, and the one we must aim at, would be that Dantzig
be again united ‘“‘ with Poland, as a powerful and independent
State.’
After waiting through the critical year 1813 and the
siege of the city, Keidel began with the desired representa-
tions to the Allied Powers the moment their victorious
armies entered Paris. He first reached the Czar through
the latter’s Swiss friend Laharpe, and handed him in May,
in the name of the Senate of Dantzig, a bold and dexterous
memorial on the question of the unlucky city. He recalled.
the oppression and violence it had suffered at the hands of
Frederic the Great and his successor. He declared the
seizure of the city by Prussia in virtue of the Second Parti-
tion to be an act which international law did not warrant.
He went back to the plans of the Czarinas Anne and Cath-
erine as guardians of the city. He demonstrated that
“ Dantzig is the key to the Vistula, and the natural and
indispensable market-place of the products and output of
76 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Poland.” Therefore, he said, “‘these very Polish lands
are most concerned for the maintenance of an independent
Dantzig.”
Keidel demanded, therefore, from Alexander the deliver-
ance of Dantzig from Prussia, and the reservation for her
in the future at least of the same guarantees of a free city
as had been given at Tilsit, this time, of course, under the
protectorate of the Czar. Properly speaking, he departed
here from his secret instructions, whose chief recommenda-
tion was the uniting of the city with Poland.
But this very reconstitution of Poland was still, during
the stay of the Allies in Paris, a very doubtful thing. Then,
again, the Allied statesman, Pozzo di Borgo the Russian
diplomat and a convinced enemy of the Poles, Metternich
and Stadion the Austrian statesmen, to whom the Dantzig
representative turned for counsel, did not in the least
favour the restoration of Poland by Alexander. In any
case Keidel, in all his papers laid before the Allies at the
time in Paris, unconditionally excluded Dantzig’s return
to the Prussian domination. At the same time he went
privately to the British Embassy in Paris and put into
the hands of the Ambassador, Sir Charles Stuart, a separate
and still more cogent memorial, which was meant for Castle-
reagh. In this he recalled the former friendly relations
of Dantzig with England. He stated emphatically that
‘““ His Majesty the King of Great Britain never ratified the
delivering up of Dantzig to the Prussian King, done tem-
porarily in 1793 and then abolished in 1807.”
Dantzig’s representative in Paris, in his search for salva-
tion for his city, received, as was natural, the support of a
most distinguished Pole who was present in the city,
Prince Adam Czartoryski. This nobleman, who was then
the friend and confidant of the Czar, took Keidel under
his protection, and with him the cause of Dantzig he was
championing. )
“The man works very well,’’ wrote Czartoryski about
Keidel in his Paris Diary of the time. ‘‘... He is an excel-
lent man ; he is stirring up compassion in commercial cities
for his own.” The Prince himself for a year and a half
had worked with the greatest industry at the reconstitution
of Poland by way of a personal union with Russia,
A FREE CITY 77
even if it had to be under the sceptre of the Czar, since
better conditions could not be realized.
In the light of this idea of a new-born Poland for
which Czartoryski was working, against Kutuzow’s plan
of complete conquest, the cause of Dantzig assumed a
fresh complexion, and turned into its normal historical
path. The goal now was no more the taking over of Dantzig
by the Czar in the spirit of the greed for extension shown
by Peter and Elizabeth, but the rightful restoration in one
form or another of the ancient and proper relation of the
city to Alexander as King of Poland. This would have
meant, of course, the greatest political and industrial gain
both for the future Kingdom of Poland and for Dantzig itself.
And it would be in exact agreement with the essential recom-
mendations of the secret instructions prepared by the Senate.
With this idea, prompted by Czartoryski and armed
with his recommendations, Keidel crossed to London, in
-erder, as the representative of the Dantzig Senate, to continue
there his efforts for saving his city from Prussia. He found
in the City time-worn sympathies for Dantzig, and used them.
Two distinguished members of the Union of London Mer-
chants, Isaac Solly and Lewis Paleske, instituted a plan
of intervention in the Dantzig interests. In the same way
Keidel got in touch with the Opposition in Parliament and
the Press. In his difficult task in London there helped
him an eminent Pole who was staying in England, Count
Joseph Sierakowski, a friend of Kosciuszko, whom Czar-
toryski had recommended to him.
In August and September, 1814, the Opposition Morning
Chronicle printed several articles inspired by Keidel which
concluded decidedly against the delivering up of Dantzig
into Prussian hands. One of these was written by Siera-
kowski. The view of the paper was that the occupying of
Dantzig by Prussia after the surrender of Rapp and the
withdrawal of the Russians was to be considered as only
a temporary expedient. Void of all legal justification, it
should be rendered void by the decision of the nations of
Europe in favour of a return to the former SREEE SHEEN of
a free city.
But all of Keidel’s movements were being watched with
the greatest care by the Prussian Embassy in London, and
78 DANTZIG AND POLAND
reported to the Chancellor Hardenberg in Berlin. They
were also being represented to the British Government,
which was at the time under Prussian influence, as highly —
suspicious actions and hostile to the cause of the Allies.
It was thus in vain that the tireless representative of
Dantzig knocked at the doors of that Government. He
turned, it is true, in person to the Prime Minister, Lord
Liverpool, and to the head of the Foreign Department,
Lord Castlereagh. He presented again a huge memorial, in
which he went back to the privileges granted by Casimir
Jagiellon. He demanded the deliverance of his city
from Prussian hands, and the guarantee for free traffic on
the Vistula. He claimed finally—and this in the spirit of
the suggestions of Prince Czartoryski—that Dantzig should
be put “‘ under the cover of the special protection ’’ (sous
Végide d'une protection spéciale) of the future King of Poland.
Unfortunately the eloquent representations of the Dantzig
deputy did not convince the British statesmen, whose fear
of Russia made them the more well-disposed to Prussia.
It was with difficulty that Keidel, as Sierakowski told
the Prince, obtained from the British Government permission
to attend the Vienna Congress. Apart from that he gained
nothing ; ‘‘ rather Lord Liverpool talked to him profusely
about the kindliness of the Prussian Government.” To
crown the whole, Weickhmann, a member of the secret
Committee of the Dantzig Senate of the former year, who
was now named Mayor of the city by the Prussian Govern-
ment, sent to Hardenberg in Berlin the whole secret declara-
tion, together with Keidel’s confidential correspondence,
The Prussians could thus, with their exact acquaintance
with the facts, take successful steps to checkmate all that
was being done for the city.
Keidel did indeed get to the Vienna Congress, 1814-15,
but all his efforts in Dantzig’s cause were easily paralysed
by Hardenberg. Nor did the mediation of Czartoryski
avail any more. He held his ground longer, it is true, in
the matter of the defence of Thorn and its incorporation
into the Kingdom of Poland. But even this point was
resigned ; and in the face of the unfriendly attitude of the
Powers, the efforts made to save Dantzig were the less able
to command success. By the treaties of Vienna, made in
A FREE CITY 79
May and June, 1815, between the Powers that had divided
Poland, as well as by the Act of the Conclusion of the Con-
gress, Dantzig was finally assigned to Prussia.®
It turned out in very truth that the final disposal of
Dantzig by the nations was achieved under extraordinary
circumstances. For it was done in the teeth of the city’s
own wish; and her. remarkable protests before the whole
of Europe, her efforts to the very last to avoid being
relegated again to the domination of Prussia, seemed
worthy of more detailed mention.
At the same time the decision of the Congress of Vienna,
which assigned Dantzig to Prussia, was taken not the least
because of the then prevailing anxieties about a Russian
hegemony in Europe, if the latter were to swallow up East
Prussia. Circumstances had now changed wholly. Such
fears had vanished. Mighty Russia has fallen at the hands
of Prussian Germany, which has also been striving after
the hegemony. In viewof the restoration of an independent
Polish Republic, the verdict of Vienna must be thoroughly
revised in the matter of Dantzig, and that in the light of
its age-long, natural, and historical connexion with Poland.
VI
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY
WITH the recovery of Dantzig by the Prussians there began
in the city a work of centralization and of Germanization.
In February 1814 a special Organizing Commission, sent
from Berlin, dissolved the previous municipal administra-
tion of the free city, which was suspected of Franco-Polish
sympathies. It set up instead a new City Council, com-
posed of creatures of the Prussian Government. It further
transformed on the same principle the character of the city
courts, dismissed the Code Napoléon, and restored the Prus-
sian Landrecht. It abolished every trace of the Polish and
French institutions of the free city, and adapted everywhere
the general Prussian municipal administration in their place.
On the new division of West Prussia into the departments
of Dantzig and Marienburg, Dantzig was made the capital
of the whole province in 1816, and became, under that
most capable, clever, and convinced Germanizing bureaucrat,
Oberpraesident Theodore Schoen, the seat of a provincial
bureaucracy, whose numbers were legion. This able ad-
ministrator, and still abler destroyer of all things Polish,
was at once a Liberal and an ultra-Prussian, and is one
of the spiritual fathers of the later National-Liberal idea
and of Hakatism. With the help of an assistant, who was
worthy of him, Flottwell, who was at the time Regency
Councillor in the city, and became later the famous Ober-
praesident of Posen, he accomplished in the eight years
of his stay in Dantzig an extraordinarily successful piece
of work for German Kultur. He did much for the improve-
ment of the administration, the rebuilding of the city, the
roads, streets,-and schools, everything with the studied,
easily-running purpose of sh peers
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 81
His work of Oberpraesident was begun with distinction.
He undertook the restoration of the old Castle of the
Grand Master in Marienburg, which has been destroyed
by the people of Dantzig and the Poles together, as a
visible symbol of the renewal of the Crusaders’ supremacy
(1817). Simultaneously he secured financial support and
administrative privileges from the Government for the
active assistance of the business world of Dantzig, which
had suffered, and was threatened with complete ruin after
the recent industrial and military subversions. By these
methods and by his own personal influence Schoen made
the first really successful breach in the bitter anti-Prussian
front the people of Dantzig had maintained, because of
their traditional inclination to Poland, and pushed forward
markedly the work of transforming the ancient Polish city
into a Prussian emporium.
All the same, these skilful operations of a superfine
bureaucracy could neither hide nor repair the actual disaster
the change brought upon the city, thus severing it from the
natural source of its well-being, its nursing Alma Mater,
from Poland. As yet, of course, the industrial misfortune
consequent on this severance was not felt so keenly during
the first period of Prussian occupation, after the Second and
Third Partitions, since at that time a considerable part
of Poland, including Warsaw, had shared Dantzig’s fate
of remaining under Prussia. But in the epoch which began
after the Congress of Vienna, and lasted a whole century,
the position of the city was at least so far changed for the
worse that Poland’s one port was finally cut off from the
new Polish State set up by the Congress. |
The results were very soon apparent. The trade of
Dantzig lost the normal guarantees of its prosperity and
improvement. For the time being the Berlin Government
was able by a dexterous method of using its influence in
St. Petersburg, and by dint of clever negotiation in trade
matters with Russia, by the palliative of a_ profitable
Customs-treaty to stimulate it artificially. But in spite of
all this, it was condemned to a gradual and inevitable end.
Misery made its appearance in the formerly wealthy city
among the patrician merchants and among the common
people, who had been producers, or who had lived on the
6
82 DANTZIG AND POLAND
traffic in timber, on the warehouses, or on the harbour itself.
And this was'‘no more merely transitional, as during the war
in Napoleon’s time. It clearly pointed to the unavoidable,
if gradual, impoverishment and decay of the city.
The population became aware of their crumbling for-
tunes, and their resentment became general. It was not
long before violent riots occurred in the city, caused by
the general poverty—a thing unheard of before in Dantzig.
They happened in September 1819, August 1821, and May
1822.
It is true that shortly after the Congress of Vienna the
Berlin Government was able, thanks to the Czar’s readiness
to serve it, and to the services of his plenipotentiaries, who
had been won over by Prussia, to conclude a Trades Conven-
tion with Russia that was highly favourable to themselves.
This extraordinary deed, dictated by Prussian interests,
introduced tariff and Customs regulations, which either
lowered or abolished all tariff on goods exported from
Prussia into Poland, killed the Polish industry that was
raising its head, and gave instead exclusive rights to the
commerce and industry of Prussia. By doing this it brought
about indirectly a certain artificial increase of the export
and import trade of Dantzig, though this success was short-
lived. Polish statesmen, and especially Prince Lubecki, the
Treasury Minister of the Polish Kingdom, soon began an
attack on the fatal arrangement. . After explaining its
harmfulness to the Czar, the Warsaw Government initiated
a tariff war of defence with Berlin. Lubecki secured an
“ukase’”’ for a prohibitive tariff in Poland against Prussia
(1822).
The next year there followed new Prussian reprisals,
which even put difficulties in the way of transit from
Poland to Dantzig. This was in direct opposition to the
purpose of the Vienna Congress, which guaranteed the free
use of the Vistula. Finally the Warsaw Government
forced the conclusion of a new agreement between Russia
and Prussia, which made the necessary degree of provision
for the industrial interests of Poland (1825). At the
same time Lubecki set about forming direct trade relations
between Poland and England, in the hope of freeing the
former from ‘“‘ Prussian tribute,’ from the ‘“‘ Cerberus
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 83
watching at our gates,’”’ the Prussian one in Dantzig. These
efforts were assisted by the Polish Consuls in Dantzig,
Makarewicz and Tengoborski, in consonance with the
Minister.
All this should have reacted most visibly on the well-
being of the city. In the event of direct trade between
Poland and England, the Port of Dantzig, used only for
transit, would have to be content with the minor gains of
the shipping trade, instead of the former generous profits
of permanent storage for buying and selling. Together
with the trade in grain, that in timber also fell off; the
more so that England during the blockade of the Continent
set herself to procure the oaks of India and the pines of
Canada, in the place of Polish timber for masts and con-
struction. The increase in the freight was no more than
the tariff imposed by Prussia. The export of Polish grain,
which had risen in 1816 to 24,000 lasts, and in 1820, after
the first agreement between Prussia and Russia, to 38,000,
fell soon after, with the commencement of the tariff war
with Warsaw, to 16,000 in 1821, and in 1822 to a bare
6,500 lasts.
Simultaneously with this economic ruin of the city,
under the Prussian crown, a systematic Germanization of
the place was also accomplished. It was a part of the
wider Germanizing programme being undertaken at the
time in the whole district. With a view to eliminating
West Prussia as a separate unit, remaining from the now
divided Poland, the recommendation came in that it should
be united with East Prussia in a single province (1824),
Schoen became Oberpraesident of both together, and his
place of residence was moved from Dantzig to Koenigsberg.
The united Diet of the province of East-West Prussia was
to meet from now onward, according to the Royal Ordinances
of 1823-24, alternately in the two cities. From this time
the designs of the Government in the matter of Prussian-
izing the Kashubian-Polish population were pushed with even
greater intensity. In the whole administration, in church,
and in school, the process of centralization and of levelling -
went on, and that in the little corner around Dantzig as
well as in the whole new province.™
In addition, and during this period after the Congress,
84 DANTZIG AND POLAND
the first incipient signs of an every way notable phe-
nomenon appeared in Pomerania about Dantzig, viz. the
re-birth of the Kashubian-Polish national consciousness.
The Kashubian Poles, from the dawn of history, the proper
indigenous Slavs in this land, had spread out hither into
the districts of Dantzig from the western Pomerania (i.e.
“Seashore ’’) of Stettin long before the dawn of the
Middle Ages, and had made themselves a home under
the sovereign protection of Poland and the rule of their
own Pomeranian Princes. As we have related, they were
broken by the deceit and violence of the Order in the
memorable massacre at the beginning of the fourteenth
century in their own city. From that time their ancient
nobility was humiliated, their people enslaved, trodden
down in body and soul, and condemned to Germanization,
poverty, and extinction.
With all this they did not permit the Order to stamp
them out, as it did the native-born Prussians proper; but,
of a softer yet more enduring temper than the latter, they
survived ages of trials, true to their popular proverb: “ The
Kashubian will never perish ! ”’
Neither did they forget the ancient and mortal injuries
done by the Crusaders, that massacre of six centuries ago,
remembered to-day in the Kashubian cradle-song :—
In Radun the waters are red,
For the blood of the sires, alas!
And that of the children was shed !
On the other hand, they preserved their close union with
Poland, dating from somewhere about Boleslaw the Great’s
time, and confirmed by their loyalty that did homage to
Lokietek, delivered from the Order and faithful to the
sceptre of the Jagiellons and the elective Republic. In the
good old days over the High Gate of Dantzig the Polish
White Eagle stood as a brother beside the black Kashubian
Griffin, which faced to the left. On the walls of the
presbytery of Oliva’s venerable abbey the portraits of the
Kings of Poland and of the Pomeranian Princes hung
peacefully side by side.
Of course, the Polish Republic, with its exaggerated respect
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY § 85
for the autonomy of Dantzig, could not hinder the passive
Germanization of the Kashubians under the Polish crown.
But all the while what remained genuinely Kashubian
bocame mingled through and through with Polish blood
and the Polish spirit, thanks to influences which leaked
through from the neighbouring Great Poland, as well as
through the constant influx by way of the Vistula of rafts-
men, traders, nobility, from Warsaw, Cracow, or even the
far-away Carpathians.
This reacted most on the Kashubian language. It
retained certain primitive marks of its ancient Slavonic
individuality, but in the course of time it became influenced
all the more, until it became at length a variation of the
Polish—just as the people themselves became a type of
the Polish nation. The tongue was far more intelligible
to the Warsaw or Cracow Pole, than Low German is to the
man of Munich or Berlin, than Provengal to the Parisian, or
the Venetian dialect to the Tuscan. It became a pleasant
maritime Polish. Thereby the language constituted an
intellectual rampart of defence both for the Kashubian
people and for the Polish element in Dantzig.
In subsequent days the Kashubians, when the restored
Prussian administration set itself to stamp out the last
traces of things Polish, and because they saw the Kingdom -
of Poland re-born across the way, under the powerful shelter
of Russia, entered on an investigation of their Polish and
Kashubian languages. The learned priest of the church
of St. Anne in Dantzig, Father Mronga-Mrongovius,
lecturer of Polish in the City Gymnasium, and a member of
the Scientific Societies of Warsaw and Cracow, undertook
studies lasting for years of Polish and Kashubian vocabu-
laries, not only from the point of view of philology, but also
from the deeper national standpoint.
This did not happen without certain aberrations of a
political sort, brought about by the prevailing relations
between Poland and Russia. The former covetous glances
of Russia towards Dantzig were repeated again in a curious
way on the field of philology. The works of Mrongovius
provoked the interest of the Governor-General of Poland,
the Grand Duke Constantin Pavlovitch, the former Chan-
cellor Rumianzeff, and the former Nationalist Russian
86 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Minister of Education, Chichkoff, and these began in
Dantzig to seek amid the old monuments of the Kashubian
tongue new evidence of its closer relationship ‘* with its
mother-tongue, the Russian,” than with Poland. In spite
of this sort of temptation, the excellent old patriot Mronga
kept to the end his life-long loyalty as a Kashubian to the
cause of Poland, both as regards its language and its politics.
“We are praying for you,’ he wrote from Dantzig
at the time of the Warsaw November Revolution (1830),
in his own name and that of his Kashubian brethren.
*“ Eternal Helper, do Thou deliver weakness out of the hands
of the furious ones!’’ On the collapse of the insurrection
he wept “ tears of blood’ over Warsaw’s fate. This learned
Kashubian son of Dantzig was therefore deserving of the
praise of the great patriot, Prince Adam Czartoryski, and the
hearty greetings of the great Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz,
sent later on from the colony in Paris to far-away Dantzig.%
The outbreak of the November Revolution and the
hopeless course of the war between Poland and Russia,
permitted Prussia to influence the traditional relations of
Dantzig to Poland in a hostile fashion, and one quite
opposed to the fairest tradition of the city’s history.
Dantzig, which was famed for its loyalty, which had always
stood by Poland without hesitation against every kind of
foreign invader, and which had of yore defended at such
sacrifice Jan Casimir against the Swedes and Stanislaw
Leszczynski against Russia, was now used and abused as
the chief basis of operations for the furnishing of secret help -
by Prussia to the troops of the Czar Nicholas, which were —
despatched to stamp out the Polish revolt.
The truth appears to be that according to the contem-
porary witness of the Field Marshal Paskiewitch, and the
Polish General-Quartermaster Prondzynski, ‘enormous sup-
plies of food and ammunition were brought by sea for the
Russian army, and then towed up the Vistula. Accord-
ing to the Russian’s new plan, Dantzig and Thorn became
their most serviceable basis of operations. . . . Through
the Russian Consul in Dantzig, and with the help of the
Prussian Government, huge stores of provisions were. bought
up and conveyed over the boundary, just as too great sup-
plies of munitions of various kinds came by sea to Dantzig
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY § 87
in Russian ships and were brought up the Vistula to
Thorn ”’ (1831).
The consequence was that revolutionary Poland, cut
off from her natural allies, France and England, and defend-
ing herself with her last strength against the Russians, was
handed over under pretence of a treacherous neutrality
by Prussia, which was content to sacrifice the once Polish
Dantzig to the behests of the Czar.
When the November Revolution was crushed and the
Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland was abrogated,
there was no one left to defend successfully the interests
of Dantzig. Prussia took for her friendship a rich reward
in the form of new, most advantageous trade agreements
with Russia. Over against the ban thus put for a long
time on a genuine development of Polish industry, however,
a certain advance in the export of land produce from the
Kingdom again vouchsafed to Dantzig for a time a certain
modest increase of earnings.
It was just after this that the aged Frederic William III,
father-in-law of Czar Nicholas I, furnished renewed proofs
of his servility to his redoubtable son-in-law. Meeting him
for a joint review of Prussian and Russian troops at Kalish
in the down-trodden Kingdom of Poland, he permitted a
part of the Russian army to be brought to\the place by
sea, and that through the harbour of Dantzig (1835). Thus
on the very centenary day of the taking of the city by
Muennich, which event Nicholas was only too pleased to
commemorate in such a fashion, Dantzig had solemnly to
receive in her midst Russian troops landing at her docks.
At the same time a new and important step was taken
in the direction of the Germanization of the Kashubians
of the whole seacoast. In 1837 the provincial Diet of
Koenigsberg passed a resolution abolishing entirely the
Polish language among the Kashubians, both in church
and school. Fortunately, the new King, the liberalizing
young Frederick William IV, who, on taking over the throne,
visited Dantzig on his way to his coronation (1840), did
rescind this burdensome edict (1843).
In these troublous times of conspiracy in Poland, an
original genius, Dr. Florian Ceynowa, the first worker for
educational ends among the Kashubians since Mronga,
88 DANTZIG AND POLAND
bore witness to the indestructible community of Kashubians
and Poles. Joining himself to the union of Polish patriots
in 1846, he was arrested by the Prussian authorities,
condemned to death, and only set free from prison by the
Berlin revolution of 1848. During these revolutionary
risings in West Prussia there was formed in the Dantzig
region the Polish-Kashubian National Revolutionary Com-
mittee, which, however, fell to pieces shortly when the
revolution in Berlin was put down. All these facts are
notable, if they are not prominent, indications of the undying,
because deeply-rooted, inward inclination of the people of
Dantzig for Poland, and that in a period of Polish history
that might be characterized as most difficult, if not alto-
gether hopeless.
Fifteen years later there came another unfortunate and
critical time for Poland, that of the great revolutionary effort
in Warsaw, cleverly used up by the Berlin Government.
The same game, including the same well-paid services to
Russia as had marked the years of 1830-31, was again
played by Prussia at the time of the Polish January
Revolution of 1863. For this reason, after the detection
of the notorious secret pact between Prussia and Russia
of February of that year, sanctioning common action to
stamp out the revolt in Poland, sharp reproofs were levelled
at Berlin. Not only did Polish and Anglo-French protests
appear, but even the progressive Prussian Opposition of the
time made its voice heard.
Then it was that Herr von Bismarck, President of the
Prussian Ministry, in defence of his anti-Polish policy, used
from the tribune of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies this
particular argument : that the success of the Polish Revolu-
tion would certainly mean the raising of the quéstion of
Dantzig by the new independent Poland.
A few days later Bismarck told the British Ambassador
in Berlin, Sir Andrew Buchanan, who in an interview was
questioning him about the secret pact, that on the proclama-
tion of an independent Polish Kingdom in Warsaw “the
first efforts of the new State would be to recover Dantzig.”
This would be a terrible blow to the power of Prussia. All
the same, in spite of Bismarck’s threats, it was the Assembly
of the Senate of the Merchants’ Corporation in Dantzig
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 89
which came out with a remarkable declaration, condemning
that secret Russo-Prussian pact as a blow aimed at the
Polish Revolution, as well as against the whole policy of
the Berlin Government directed against Poland. Nor did
they take account in the least of the coming of the new
monarch, William I, with his Queen, Augusta, to Dantzig in
that very year.
It was clear that the old sympathy for the Polish
Republic had not yet died out in the city, in spite of all
the workings of the Prussian Government. What is more,
the Kashubian people of the seacoast showed their sympathy
for the Warsaw Revolution in military action. According
to the witness of one of the revolutionary leaders, there still
existed at the beginning of 1864 a rebels’ unit, composed
“of nothing but Kashubian peasants, who had joined the
division, but refused either pay or assistance. They
marched from the Baltic to the boundary of the Government
of Plock at their own expense, in the middle of winter,
nor would they take wagons from any one for the journey.
They crossed the line, and when forced back, they would
not disperse, but demanded to be led against the enemy
again. When they were told that all was lost, they dragged
themselves home with tears in their eyes and at their own
cost. Nor did they cease to reckon up the numbers whom
they had left on Polish soil.” %
The crushing of the January Revolution by Russia with
the political support of Berlin was afterwards, as is well
known, utilized to the full by Prussia in its victorious wars
with Austria and France. The Germans counted on Russia’s
gratitude. For Dantzig itself, however, the fate of the Polish
revolutionaries could mean nothing but misfortune. More-
over, the speedy development of the industry of the King-
dom of Poland, which now began, and could not longer
be hindered, together with the building of a network of rail-
ways, and still more the laying down of the railway on the
Vistula, coupled with the complete neglect of the regulation
of the river itselfi—all this sorely undermined the trade
of Dantzig in grain and timber with the Kingdom, as with
the whole Russian part of Poland. A similar influence upon
Dantzig’s decline was wrought by the sudden growth of
the rival ports Libau and Riga, which were pushed forward
90 DANTZIG AND POLAND
by the Russians, and also by influential circles among the
Baltic Barons in St. Petersburg.
It is very noteworthy that all this time Dantzig, under
the specious pretence of official goodwill and protection,
was actually being treated by the Prussian Government
itself with studied purpose in step-motherly fashion. The
city was allowed simply to languish away, and was forced
from her one-time greatness to the very level of a second-
rate provincial town. As a matter of fact the possession of
Dantzig always had for Prussia a purely negative significance.
The Prussians were concerned that Poland should not have
her natural outlet to the sea, along the Vistula, the mother
of her streams; that she should not have a normal way
of export for the rich fruits of her soil; and that the main-
tenance of a healthy credit balance for the State Treasury
should not be possible. Prussia was concerned noé¢ to permit
a direct means of communication between Poland and the
Western World, which was its regular customer, both as
buyer and seller, as well as in case of need her powerful
political ally. She was concerned that the Polish Dantzig
should not become the rival of her own German seaports,
Koenigsberg, Stettin, and afterwards Kiel and Hamburg.
For all these purely negative reasons the Prussians were
in fact concerned in the period before the Partitions that
Dantzig should mot enjoy the fulness of life as a part of
Poland, and, again, after the Partitions that the city should
not grow, but vegetate as a part of Prussia.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, when the
development of Prussia went on with ever-increasing speed
as regards organization and industry, the singularly negative
attitude of the Berlin Government to the systematically
persecuted city is thrown into bolder relief. This was seen,
for example, when the Eastern Railway was built from
Berlin to Koenigsberg. In a scandalous manner Dantzig
was ignored, and the line built on purpose to avoid her
(1853). This involved naturally sore losses to her trade,
and these are apparent to this day.
In lieu of any tangible assistance for her trade, the
Prussian Government offered the city trumped-up benefac-
tions of a bureaucratic and militarist sort, which were of no
value to a commercial town; In 1878 Dantzig was again
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 91
made the administrating capital city of the province of West
Prussia. The Oberpraesident’s authority was transferred to
it, and the Regency, the provincial Customs office, the School
- collegium, and the Postal and Police administrations. The
city was stuffed full of German State officials. |
It was crowded up likewise with military offices. Dantzig
became a “‘ war-harbour ’’ and the “seat of the High Com-
mand of the Seventeenth Army Corps of West Prussia.”’
Artillery workshops were established, ship-building docks,
especially for torpedo-boats, and small-arms factories were
built. The attempt was even made to found different
metallurgic, chemical, and machinery plants, factories for
match-making, etc., all under special patronage, subsidized
by the Government, and yielding lamentable financial
results. This, however, was only artificial, and it could
not take the place of the one thing Dantzig needed, her
essential, natural, and only help, the one thing Prussian
militarism and bureaucracy would not, and could not, give
her, viz. free trade with a free Poland, and the restoration
of her industrial and political union with that of Poland.
Meantime the Polish trade of the Prussian Dantzig
kept falling off more and more. The fact struck even
foreign observers, who more than once drew attention to
it. Sir William White, who had for many years (1865-75)
been British Consul-General in the city, drew the attention
of his Government to the approaching ruin of the trade
between England and Dantzig, which was for various reasons
important for the former. As the grandson of Sir W. Neville
Gardiner, the last representative of Great Britain in the
Republic in Poland in 1794, he had been first himself English
Consul in Warsaw at the time of the January Revolution, and
had been removed, for being too great a friend of Poland, at
the request of the Russian Government. He became later
famous as Ambassador in Constantinople. This distinguished
statesman, who was connected closely with Poland by family
ties and remained her true friend until death, already during
his residence in Dantzig was clearly aware of the importance
of the city for Poland, and so for Europe.
He was a witness when, at the beginning of the Franco-
Prussian War, Dantzig for the third time since 1734 (the
second being in 1812) saw once more the war banner of
92 DANTZIG AND POLAND.
France. In August of 1871 three armoured cruisers and
a patrol of the French fleet, under Vice-Admiral Bouet-
Villaumez, dropped anchor in the gulf, but after a short
cannonade steamed off again to the West. There could be
no talk, then, of France delivering Dantzig, and the city,
after the French defeat, sank deeper and deeper. White
emphasized in his Dantzig despatches the characteristic
fact that, when the intensive industrial expansion of the
German Empire began after the victorious campaign in
France, Dantzig was undergoing a contemporary process
of decay. As a matter of fact the exports and imports of
the city in the next five years (1871-75) dropped again by
more than ro per cent.%
The decisive blow for Dantzig came, however, when a
little later a fundamental change was effected in the German
tariff policy in the direction of protective dues, and espe-
cially in the interests of the caste of agrarian Junkers,
chiefly East Prussian, who were the real lords in the new
empire. The prime step was taken in this direction when, in
1879, the new tariff law was introduced by Bismarck, which
raised the Customs enormously on grain and timber trans-
ported from the Kingdom of Poland and from Russia.
This very project evoked unrest in Dantzig, and the city
found means of expressing its opinion during the discussion
of the motion in the Prussian Diet.
In the course of this discussion, among others who
opposed the plan, was that famous'member of the Progressive
Party in the German Parliament and the Prussian Diet,
who had represented Dantzig for many a year, Henry
Rickert. With the greatest emphasis he set forth in detail
the disastrous consequences of the new tariff Bill for the
Polish-Russian export trade in its bearing on the trade of
Prussia as a whole, and its Dantzig trade in particular.
Bismarck returned an answer full of deductions that
were insincere, inexact, and even illogical. In the course
of a long speech he asserted that the grain from the
Polish lands must in any case come into Prussia, whatever
was the duty; that the Polish producer would have to
pay the increase in the same, and not the German con-
sumer; that Riga would never be able to rival Dantzig,
etc. He gave the game away, however, and revealed
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 93
his real mind, when, speaking scornfully of the decay of
the Vistula’s traffic, he made the notable remark that of
course ‘‘ all the raftsmen are foreigners,”’ i.e. Poles.
The almighty Chancellor easily got his burdensome
duty accepted by the submissive Parliament. Six years
later the German agrarians, having partaken of the Govern-
ment’s tariff benefactions, were influential in introducing
a tariff reform which again put serious Customs restric-
tions in the way of Polish and Russian export of grain
and timber (1885). Once more during the consequent
bitter debates, lasting through several sessions of the
Reichstag in Berlin, the opposition emphasized strongly
the actual lamentable results for Dantzig of the previous
tariff regulation. The member for Dantzig, Rickert, called
the new and additional restrictions now projected “a
murderous blow ”’ to the trade and well-being of his city.
Bismarck had the nerve to answer with the categorical
and plainly untrue assertion, that “the trade of Dantzig
had advanced since 1879, and had profited by the bene-
factions of the new legislation.’”’ The agitation against
the new scheme he branded with disdain, declaring that
its aim was “to give the labourers and dockmen of the
port a chance to make a noise now that a grain-duty is
being introduced in Dantzig.’’ This time, too, as was
natural, the Chancellor put through his restrictions, gratified
his agrarians, and finally crushed the trade prospects of »
Dantzig.
His real thought about Dantzig, which the “Iron
Chancellor’ kept diplomatically to himself as long as he
was at the helm, he commenced more expressly to reveal
after his fall, in indiscreet utterances over his resignation.
At a reception in Varzin in 1894, when a German Nationalist
deputation from the Duchy of Posen gathered to do him
homage, Bismarck recommended strongly in a fiery speech of
thanks that they should keep an even “ securer watch on the
Warta and Vistula than on the Rhine, since not an inch of
soil could be yielded. . . . If a Polish State were formed, it
would be the ally of our enemies; it would be an active,
aggressive power, until it got West Prussia and Dantzig
under its control.”
Once more, too, and that shortly afterwards, when
94 DANTZIG AND POLAND
receiving in audience a kindred deputation em masse from
West Prussia, the eighty-year-old Prince expressed the
quintessence of his views and premonitions in the matter
of Poland in the following words :—
It is my political conviction, that to have Russia as neighbour
is indeed at times unpleasant and troublesome; but a Poland would
be worse. If I had to choose, I should always prefer to have to do
with the Czar in St. Petersburg than with the nobles of Warsaw.
. . . If the dream of the Poles were to become a reality, the danger
for Dantzig would be the proximate one. The Poles would have
to annex it. Dantzig would be the first desideratum of a State with
Warsaw as capital. It would be the conditio sine qua non of a Polish
Republic.§7
But now the Prussian anti-Polish policy, which was
already in Bismarck’s time out to exterminate with its
campaign of colonization (1886), became more severe than
ever under the third Chancellor, von Buelow, with its studied
persecution of the Polish schools and its confiscation scheme
(rg01, 1906-7). This all gave rise toa salutary Polish reaction
for self-preservation in the whole of Prussian Poland, and of
course, too, in the region of Dantzig. A powerful defence
movement, both material and moral, starting in Poznan
and supported by Warsaw, spread itself out right to the
ancient Baltic confines of the Republic. At once the purely
defensive action, which could not help being also aggressive
in temper, was recognized by the Prussians, who were
looking anxiously on, as a “‘ Polish drive to the Baltic.”
In this peaceable undertaking for self-protection, among
the 750,000 Poles of West Prussia, 150,000 Kashubians
took a very active part. It is true they had been for half
a century greatly embarrassed by the sight of the growing
prosperity of the Powers which divided Poland, and the
misery of that people after the January Revolution. They
were to be enticed by the growing power of Germany, or
even by the sheer immensity of Russia, to desert Poland’s
thoroughly stricken cause. This went so far that the worthy
Ceynowa, of yore the Polish revolutionary patriot, appeared
at the Slav Congress in Moscow in 1867, three years after
the Warsaw Revolution, to witness the sympathy of the
Kashubians with the Russian Slavophile movement.
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 95
But all this meant only the semblance of clouds cast
over the Polish-Kashubians’ self-consciousness. During the
years between the re-constituting of the German Empire
(1871) and the last elections held before the war (1912),
the only Polish mandates from West Prussia to the Berlin
Reichstag and the Prussian Diet that were permanent
were guaranteed by the loyal votes of the three Kashubian
constituencies, Konitz, Starggard, and Putzig.
And just in proportion as the oppression of Poland on
the part of Germany and Russia grew crueller, the old
Polish-Kashubian unity began to strengthen its hold. The
Kashubian poet of Dantzig, Derdowski, called on Warsaw,
the Polish capital in 1885, with a dolorous ditty :—
We of Kashubia are guarding for Poland her sea-front:
You there in Warsaw have scarcely a thought for your kinsmen !
And at the same time he launched the striking call :—
‘There’s no Kashubia without Poland:
And no Poland without us!
From this time (1890) the Kashubian cause found in
the Polish Dantzig Gazelte a constant champion. Simulta-
neously the Co-operative Movement in economic matters
spread from Poznan out to the Dantzig coasts and formed
here, slowly at first, and then from 1895 daily faster, more
than thirty co-operative Polish banks, among them the
biggest in the region of Pomerania, that in Dantzig (1901).
Further acts of Germanization only gave new spurs to this
work. A healthy and energetic Young Kashubian move-
ment sprang up, completely consecrated to the Polish
cause, which even outstripped in its high idealism the sober
politicians of Great Poland. It demanded, and with justice,
the respect on Poland’s part of the individualities peculiar .
to Kashubia, and worthy of preservation for the sake of
their spirit and their past. This organization gathered in
1g08-9, on the six-hundredth anniversary of the conquest
of Dantzig by the Crusaders, around the symbolical
Griffin, the first Polish-Kashubian periodical, which was
soon (Igiz) transferred to Dantzig, as being ‘“‘ the chief
city of Kashubia.’’ &
96 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Meanwhile the life of the city went along on the blind
and confined course the Prusso-German authorities had
mapped out for it, without any way of escape towards real
growth. The chief Polish grain-warehouse was turned
into a Prussian armoury. The instructions of the Prussian
Staff were officially confirmed, that in the expected event
of a war on two fronts “ Dantzig, in a defensive conflict
with Russia, must be a pivotal basis of operations.” The
garrison was increased. In Langfuhr a brigade of Letb-
husaren was placed, a “‘ Brigade of Death,’’ with the warrior
Kronprinz as their commander. Each year the population
was treated to the manceuvres of the German fleet in the
gulf. The city was gladdened by an equestrian statue of
William I in his spiked helmet, a hideous abortion that
ruined the High Gate. It was unveiled by William II
in person, with the assistance of Prince Buelow, and amid
the mouthing of lying orations, to glorify in Dantzig “the
heritage of the German Knighthood ”’ (1903). 7
Certainly more than one good deed was done for the
city. With the help of English engineers a model water
and sewerage system was installed in the years 1869-71.
The regulating of the mouth of the Vistula was undertaken
in 1888. After ten years of work the beautiful Free Port
was opened, too shallow it is true, and soon seen to be too
narrow. This was in the Neufahrwasser in 1899. Follow-
ing on, the new Kaiser Port was opened in 1904. Lastly,
there was founded the Dantzig School of Engineering, etc.
This Government solicitude did not, however, make up
for the real, but dissimulated, persecution in the field of
economic matters. Its separation from Poland became for
Dantzig an incurable wound. It avenged itself steadily,
both in the matter of the whole economic well-being of
the city, and still more in that of communications. The
partial improvement of the river mouth and the city harbour
did not help much as long as the whole middle course of
the Vistula was neglected, and so long as not even the
minimum of two metres was reached by dredging to allow
the modest type of 600-ton barges.
The ancient traffic on rafts and that with sailing-galleys
on the river also declined. The newer traffic with steam,
begun by the French Guiberts in 1829, and subsidized by
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 97
Count Andrew Zamoyski in 1848, could not develop as it
should have. It numbered at the end of Ig1I, on the whole
Vistula, little more than a hundred vessels, several times
less than on the shorter Elbe, the Oder, etc. The city of
Dantzig itself, sometime proud of her maritime position,
had scarcely twenty little steamers, with a tonnage of some
18,000 tons in all, for sea-trade.®9
As for communications on land, it had already been
noted how the tariff preference granted by the Berlin
Government to other seaports, especially to the two ancient
rivals of Dantzig, Koenigsberg, and Stettin, which had been
subsidized even by Frederic the Great, and competed with
Dantzig from both sides, had never ceased sorely to injure
the city. Only after a long conflict, lasting fifteen years
from 1862, and conducted by the Council of the City Mer-
chants, the indispensable but simple railway connexion
with Warsaw was at length established, by way of Mlawa
and Marienburg (1877).
In return, however, Dantzig was again hard hit by a
one-sided political tariff scheme, which prescribed lower
rates on the railways to Lodz from Stettin than from
Dantzig. “Our connexion with the south of Poland,”
complained in 1907 the report of the Council of the Dantzig
Merchants, “‘ gives way before the advancing Stettin, which
enjoys lower railway-rates, although it is much farther
away. This fact, too, has had a disastrous effect on our
transport trade.”
: Amid such conditions Dantzig’s trade in grain and
timber, which had flourished while Poland existed, was
consigned to a subordinate position. The imports to the
city of Polish-Russian grain, already hard hit by the factors
mentioned, especially by Bismarck’s raising of the duty,
fell in the twenty years from 18go to 1910 from 145,000 tons
to 103,000 tons, or about one-third. Because of insufficient
deliveries, the prices of wheat and rye in Dantzig, the one-time
granary of Europe, during the years from 1909 for which
reports are available, have been higher than in Hamburg,
Stettin, or Koenigsberg.
A similar and steady shrinkage occurred in the imports
to Dantzig of Polish-Russian timber. In the twenty years
from 1891 to 1911 these sank from 500,000 to 379,000 cubic
| 7
98 DANTZIG AND POLAND
metres, or one-fourth. Of the new articles of import, that
of cotton was checked by the protective Russian tariff in
favour of Turkestan cotton in 1887, and finally passed into
the hands of Hamburg and Stettin. In the same way the
import of coal from England was hindered. It is true that
the latest trades agreement between Germany and Russia
in 1904, exceptionally favourable to Germany, could not
help affecting in some way Dantzig also for the better.
But the degree of improvement was much smaller than in
the case of the other rival German seaports.
In the course of the ten following years, up to I913,
the maritime imports into Dantzig rose, like the exports,
from some 600,000 tons lading to not quite 800,000 regis-
tered tons. This slow advance is like stagnation in com-
parison with the swift advance in the corresponding figures
for other cities during the same time. Hamburg’s figures
increased to over 13,000,000 tons, Bremen’s to nearly
2,000,000, Stettin’s to 1,900,000, and even the much smaller
cities, Luebeck and Rostock, saw their trade rise by one
and one and a half millions respectively. All this time the.
industry of the city remained an insignificant compensation,
artificially fostered, and chiefly composed of official military
establishments. The whole business, so the last official
report tells us (1913), “‘ was still very feebly developed,”
and “‘ was more dependent on political considerations than
on economic growth.”’ 7°
All this could not but react negatively on the position
and growth of the population of Dantzig up to our own
time. Even in the matter of numbers the results are
evident. Atthe middle of the seventeenth century it was the
most populous city of the Polish Republic, with its 80,000
inhabitants, considerably higher than the capital Warsaw.
Thinned out later, especially owing to Prussian violence
in the eighteenth century, the city scarcely numbered at
the middle of the nineteenth as many people under Prussian
rule as it had had two hundred -years before. The appear-
ance of growth was brought about, in the teeth of the
Municipality, in 1877 by an ordinance of the Government,
which incorporated fourteen suburban communities into the
city, thus bringing the population up to 100,000. Thirty
years later the population of Dantzig, according to the
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 99
Census of 1910, had risen to 170,000, or hardly double what
it had been two and a half centuries before.
It was thus far and away outstripped by the contempo-
rary figures of other German seaports: by Hamburg with a
million, by Bremen with 300,000, and even by the cities
that had formerly been much smaller, Stettin and Koenigs-
berg, which now number each a quarter of a million
inhabitants.
What is more, during the last half-century (1860-1910)
the population of all the larger Polish cities, which were
not under Prussian domination, Warsaw, Wilno, Lwow,
Cracow, has grown threefold, fivefold, or, as in the case of
Lodz, more than tenfold—which are all rates incomparably
faster than those of Dantzig. This city, which was once,
as I have said, the most populous of the prominent cities
of Poland, to-day, after a hundred years of Prussian occu-
pation, has lagged behind, and is the least populous of all.
The first has now been made last.
The number of Kashubian-Poles registered as such
in the present city lists is now estimated at the relatively
unimportant sum of 6,000. In reality it could to-day
be at least doubled, or even trebled, if it were not for the
threats attending the registration. Dantzig is a city where
the officials are not too well paid, since, not being “ threat-
ened with Polonization,”’ it does not benefit from the supple-
mentary pay for the East Marches (Ostmarkenzulage).
Here, then, a host of Polish officials eke out a kind of
existence, but they do not confess their nationality for fear
of losing their modest posts.
In the business world of the city the number of born
Poles is equally large. They live from the custom of the
Government institutions of the city, haunted, too, by the
fear of losing their means of subsistence. Very many of »
them would reject their Germanism in a moment if the
age-old union of the city with Poland were renewed, and
would return to their former Kashubian-Polish allegiance.
Apart from these, Dantzig retains to-day some 60,000
Catholics, which means about a third of the whole popula-
tion. On them the German party of the Centre has been
concentrating its influence. This was done when, after
Prince Buelow dissolved the Reichstag (1907), the famous
100 . DANTZIG AND POLAND
“ Ride of the Centre to the East’’ for election purposes
took place in the direction of West Prussia and Dantzig.
These influences looked at the start favourable to the
Poles, but soon commenced, especially after the last elec-
tions (1912), to tend in an anti-Polish direction, as can be
seen from the West Prussian Popular Newspaper, the influ-
ential organ of the Centre in Dantzig. The German Catholic
people of Dantzig were once, as noted, away back in the
Middle Ages assigned to a Polish diocese, and were afterwards
sheltered for centuries beneath the egis of the Polish
Kings. There can, however, certainly be no doubt that,
if they were once delivered from the influence of Prussian
administration and the Centre, and restored to the former
care of the Polish State and Church instead, this German-
Catholic population, which formerly belonged to a Polish
diocese, and were true for centuries to the Polish crown,
would speedily recover their former affection for the
Republic. |
The same comment is likewise true of the German Pro-
testant part of the population, whether the ancient burger
circles which read the serious and moderate German Danizig
Gazette of years standing, and the circles roused up
nationally against all that is Polish by the MHakatist
Dantzig News, or finally the socialist masses, who feel
most sorely the economic stagnation of their city, when
cut off from Poland, under the Prussian authorities. Thus
unquestionably the great majority of born Dantzig people,
with the exception of just the Pan-German, official, military,
and other purely migratory elements, would easily, without
- regard to estate or profession or creed, shake themselves
loose from these hateful anti-Polish instigations, the moment
the city succeeded in being once more joined to the Polish
Republic. They would return gladly to the time-worn
traditions of prosperity and progress, to enjoy the tested
brotherly relations which once existed, and to cherish the
loyalty of worthy subjects to “the Most Serene Republic
of Poland.”’
Very notable signs of this are not lacking. They are
to be seen from the day when with the ending of the world-
war a tremendous crisis began to shape itself to the destruc-
tion of German imperialism, and the actual new-birth of
IN THE HANDS OF PRUSSIA AND GERMANY 101°
Poland and the restoration of Dantzig under her sway
began to appear on the arena of practical possibilities.
Already in October 1918 the Imperial Government in
Berlin received a confidential telegram from the German
ambassador in Berne, that “‘ the merchants of Dantzig are
said to be turning to the Polish Government in Warsaw,
and expressing the wish that Dantzig might be restored to
Poland, and that they expected great good therefrom for the
future of the city.”” The Chancellor’s office in the Wilhelm-
strasse was so disturbed by the report, that by way of the
Imperial Office for Foreign Affairs it sent confidential word
of the same to the Governor-General of Warsaw, through the
central agency of the Secret Military Police.7* At the same
time the German authorities in Dantzig itself spared no
effort to initiate an anti-Polish and pro-German movement.
Indeed, we can see from the correspondence addressed to
the German officials in Warsaw from the city in November
1918, which fell into Polish hands on the evacuation of
the city by the former, ‘“‘ personal letters were sent around
in the royal workshops in Dantzig with the question whether
the receiver was German or Polish. Whoever gave himself
out to be a Pole was to be discharged at once.” 72
Such haste in applying coercive measures clearly proves
that the Prussian authorities had good grounds for fearing
the actual tone of public opinion in the city. As a matter
of fact, the local Nationalist-Prussian elements, in spite of
boisterous agitation, revealed their whole weakness during
the last elections to the revolutionary Parliament of the
Empire, at which they secured barely one-sixth of the
votes cast. But the most remarkable thing is this, that
the unheard-of catastrophe of the war with the revolution,
and then the economic crisis for Germany, which brought
with it a marked depression in the price of land in other
German seaports, caused on the other hand in Dantzig an
extraordinary rise in the value of real estate and town-
sites. This rise has been a plain intimation of the optimism
roused in the people of the city at the splendid prospect
for their mother-city, in the event of its separation from
Prussia, and an eventual restoration to Poland.73
The last effort at hindering this possibility from the
Prusso-German side has /been the ventilation of the idea
22. oi. 2: DANTZIG AND POLAND
to create of Dantzig a free city. Being now without
prospects of keeping it for themselves, the Pan-Germans
would like to hinder its being restored to Poland. Such a
move, though very clever, cannot however succeed for any
long period. The abstract and only superficially German
nationality of the people of Dantzig could never serve as a
pretext for doing violence to the city’s connexion with
Poland, a connexion at once real in itself and confirmed both
by its geographical position and its past. The Germans, who
have first-class ports of their own, cannot justly claim the
one port which serves Poland. Dantzig wasted away under
their domination, and it is essential to the life of a resurrected
Poland. It is Poland’s rightful, time-worn heritage. It
was only torn from her by force ; it had flourished under
her sceptre, and it again will flourish under the same fostering
care. There can be no thought of letting this one Polish
port be cut off from the future State under the guise of a
free city, so that outside the bounds of her sovereignty it
might become at her expense a powerful German emporium,
set right in her side, planted at her very gates, and the
guardian of her one exit to the sea and the wide world.
The destiny of Dantzig will be seen to be wholly different.
Only a single right and successful solution of the problem
is possible: that which serves the interests alike of the
city, of Poland, and of Europe, and is from the start sus-
tained by natural and historical justice. Dantzig must
revert to Poland, Poland to Dantzig. In that event, with-
out any injury done to the present German population,
and without any pressure upon it, on the lines of voluntary
and natural choice of what is one’s own good, and under
the influence of factors more enticing still than they were
in the times before the Partitions—-a more intensive business
connexion with Poland, nearer communications with her
centres, Posen, Warsaw, and Cracow, and union with the
more effective influence of Polish national culture--under
such conditions as these the ancient city of Dantzig, born
anew in the present, will become the great, powerful, and
prosperous seaport of the resurrected Poland.
NOTES
1. The Dantzig literature in the fine Bibliography of Polish His-
tory of Finkel (1906), NN. 17299 sqq., 23965 sqq., need completing.
The best general works on Dantzig are: R. Curicke, Die Stadt Danzig,
historische Beschreibung (posthumous edition by his son, Amsterdam-
Danzig, 1688); Lengnich, Jus publ. civit. gedan. (ed. of Guenther,
tg910) ; Gralath, Versuch einer Geschichte Danzigs (Koenigsb., 1789-
91}; Loeschin, Geschichte Danzigs von d. aeltest. bis zur neuest.
Zeit (1828) ; Simson, Geschichte der Stadt Danzig (unfinished, 1913-18).
2. On Dantzig from, the topographical point of view :—
Balinski-Lipinski, Ancient Poland I (1843), 675 sqq.; Dictionary
of Geography II (1881), 513 sqq. (errors in dates and figures) ; Sonntag,
Danz. Strandverschiebungen ; Freytag, D. Danz. Werder (Zeitschrift
fuer Westpr. Gesch. I (1908); Duda, The Development of Polish
Pomerania, from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries (1909); A.
Hirsch, Die geogr. Lage u. Entwicklung Danzigs (1912).. Bare German
accounts of earlier date of the fancied German-Gothic origins of Dantzig
rested exclusively on an arbitrary interpretation of mentions made
by Pliny (Hist. Nat.), by Tacitus (Germania), Ptolemy (Geography),
Pomponius Mela (De situ orbis), etc., where the Vistula is said to
be a boundary between Germans and Slavs, and the Goths and Wendts
are said to be neighbours. These references are quite indefinite,
and have no worth as evidence whatsoever. On the other hand,
the first certain proof from the sources, that Dantzig had a Slavonic
character from the beginning, is the old Saxon report of Wulfstan
the Seafarer in the ninth century, interpolated by Alfred the Great
into his translation of the Chronicles of Orosius. This declares that
sailing along the very coast of the Baltic to the mouth of the Vistula,
he had Slavonic peoples on his right. hand all the time, Script. rer.
pruss. I (1861), 732. A second and final proof, establishing the old-
slavonic sound of the name of the city of Dantzig, we have in the
earliest biography of St. Adalbert, Joannis Canaparius; Vita S. Adal-
berti: “ ipse vero adiit primo urbem Gyddanyz,”’ Script. rer. pruss. I,
228. In view of this the latest German historian of Dantzig, Simson,
I (1913), 12 sqq., has been forced to renounce the former Gothic-
German accounts, and to affirm that “tribes of western Slavs must
also have been the founders of Dantzig. It is a certain fact that
Dantzig is not a German but a Slav name.”
108
104 DANTZIG AND POLAND
3. The assigning of Dantzig to the diocese of Cujavia-Wloclawek :
the bull of Eugene III, Rheims, April 4, 1148 :-—
. . . Warnero Ulotizlauensi episcopo eiusque successoribus . . .
castrum Kdanze i in Pomerania cum decima tam, annone quam omnium
eorum que de navibus solvuntur,” Cod. dipl. Pol., II, 1; Perlbach,
Pomerell. Urkundenbuch (1881), N. 2.
4. Wladislaw Lokietek in Dantzig: he stayed there in January
and June, 1298, in April and May, 1299, and in December, 1306. His
verdicts and grants in the matters of the monasteries of Oliva, Pelplin,
of the Bishop of Cujavia, etc., ‘“‘ actum in Dansk,” “‘ data it»Gdanzk,”
January 13, 1298, April 29, 30, 1298, May 21, 1299, December 17,
1306, Perlbach, NN. 552-3, 572-5, 650. Cf. Dlugosz, Hist. Pol.,
III (1873), 28: ‘‘ Descendebat autem Wladislaus Loktek personaliter
in Gdansk (1306), maximo honore tam militum, quam civium, de suo.
principatu exultantium, receptus, ubi.. . fidelitatis et homagii
accepit juramenta.”’ .
5. On the origins of Dantzig’s trade with Poland, on the Polish
raft-traffic in thirteenth century, vid. Th. Hirsch, Handels-u. Gewerbe-
geschichte Danzigs unter der Herrsch. des Deutschen Ordens (1858),
172 sqq.: “(im Polen der Piastenzeit) eine schnelle, das Interesse
der Fremden sorglich beriicksichtigende Justiz.”
6. On the Teutonic massacre in Dantzig, November 14, 1308,
Script. rer. pruss. I, III, passim, the admissions of eye-witnesses :—
“furtim intraverunt civitatem et occiderunt milites et uxores
eorum et pueros, et sic occupaverunt civitatem,”’ “in expugnacione
et capcione castri Gdansk multos milites et. bonos alios homines et
eciam, pueros in cunabulis (occiderunt),’”’ Lites ac res gestae inter
Polonos ordinemque crucifer., I (1890), 26, 265 sq.; the Bull of
Clement V, Avin. 19 jun. 1310: “in civitate.Gdansco ultro decem
milia hominum gladio peremerunt, infantibus vagientibus in cunis
mortis exitium inferentes, quibus etiam hostis fidei pepercisset,”’
Theiner Monum, pol. I (1861), No. 204, Lites I, 420. The explanation
of the procurator of the Order, 1310, in answer to the above Bull:
“item quod predicti cives (Danzike) destruxerunt propria voluntate
domos dicti opidi et iverunt ad habitandum in aliis partibus,’’ Perl-
bach, N. 696, Dlugosz III, 44 sq.: ‘nec ulli polonicae gentis parcunt
conditioni, sexui, aut aetati, sed tam puberes, quam impuberes et
aetatem, infantilem et lactantem absque ulla miserationis respectu
extinguunt . . . ut fama crudelitatis tantae diffusa, corda eaeterorum
perculsa, ad faciendam in aliis civitatibus et munitionibus resistentiam
pavescerent .. . et securior illis occupatio dictae terrae proveniret.
Raro unquam, polonici sanguinis in alicuius loci conquisitione plus
effusum, raro caedes inhumanior.”’
7. Caro (who enjoys undeserved authority, since with all his
erudition he is often superficial, oftener biased, and always at
bottom an enemy of Poland), Gesch. Polens, II (1863), 43, mitigates
the massacre of Dantzig, averring Polish ‘ exaggerations,’ and
“ wrong-doing and bloody violence on both sides.’’ Major-General
Koehler, Gesch. der Festung Danzigs u. Weichselmuende, ‘‘ most
respectfully dedicated to His Majesty the Emperor and King William I,”
NOTES 105
I (1893), 20 sqq.: ‘‘ In view of the purposes it formed in regard to
Pomerania, the Order could not leave the rich city behind it, which
had shown itself so spiteful. The Landmaster (Henry von Plotzke)
demanded therefore the levelling of the ramparts and the evacuation
of the city by the inhabitants. They had to submit. There can
thus be no talk of a destruction of the city as the Polish reports had
it (!). The houses probably were broken up in order to be used as
building material (!). . . . We get a taste of Mongolian war methods
in the treatment meted out to Dantzig and Dirschau. Dzengis Khan
did much the same thing on a larger scale when he conquered the
empire of the Chovaresmi, as he was not supplied with sufficient
troops to permit him to garrison the larger cities. In view of the
few troops at the disposition of the Order it had no choice but to act
in the same way. Dzengis Khan destroyed the cities and divided up
the younger inhabitants among his troops as slaves. The older ones
he had put to death. The Order was content (!) to force the people
of Dantzig to leave the city.”
Influenced by such an explanation as this, even Simson, I, 44 sq.,
tries hard to excuse the massacre. On the other hand, the older
historians of the city of Dantzig, Chytraeus, Curicke, Lengnich,
condemned the crime of the Order in strongest terms, while the
excellent Loeschin, even though writing under Prussian censure,
branded in 1828 in his Gesch. Danzigs, I, 38: ‘‘ The entry of the
Brothers of the Order into the city, stained with the blood of 10,000
dead.’’ Of the latest Polish works, cf. Kujot, The 14 November
in Dantzig and the Region, in the Annual of the Scientific Soc. of
Thorn, 1908, 87 sqq., and The Hist. of East Prussia, I, in the
Same journal, 1916, 1242, sqq. Cf. the small contribution of Pro-
chaska, Memoirs of the Order, in the Archives of the Hist. Com.
of Cracow Academy, I, 243. On the transfer of the Residence of the
Order to Marienburg after the event in Dantzig, between September
13 and 21, 1309, cf. Lohmeyer, Gesch. von Ost und Westpreussen, I
(1908), 160, 164 sqq.
8. The Order’s Trade Competition: all the early historians of
Dantzig complain about it. Even the newest, Simson I, 106 sqq.,
I10, admits it as “‘ the cause of the later estrangement, even hostility
of the city to the Order . .. Dantzig’s trade could not reach its
height before the fall of the Order’s rule, when now no more barriers
separated Dantzig from the Polish hinterland.” In the best years
of the rule of the Order, Dantzig had 10,000 inhabitants, cf. Foltz,
Gesch. der dantz. Stadthaushalts (1912), 8. Of the solicitude of the
Polish episcopate for Dantzig, the best witness is the curious Indul-
gence declaration of the Primate Archbishop of Gnesno and of the
nine Polish Bishops in favour of the building of the church of Notre
Dame in Dantzig, made in Kalish, in synodo provinciali, May 20,
1406, vid. Simson IV (1913), 119.
9g. The anti-Teutonic riots in Dantzig after Tannenberg: the
report of an eye-witness (1410) in Scr. rer. pruss. III (1866), 485:
“So there came in a great many honourable guests . . . to Dantzig
from the conflict, of whom the most were sore wounded and opined
106 DANTZIG AND POLAND
there rest to find and healing for their wounds. While then the folk
of the city were considering whether they had cast in their lot with
the Polish King, or should yet do so, the guests had to leave the place.
. . . The people gathered a force, the town-hall was sounded, the
folk became furious . . . and smote the wounded as well as any
hale ones who were with them from one street into the other... .
They then gave the city over to the Polish King out and out,
and received a Polish lord into the place as sheriff.” Cf. also
Kujot, Der Krieg von 1410, Annals of the Scientific Soc. of Thorn,
XVII, 193 sqq. ©
10. The charter of Ladislaus Jagiello for Dantzig, from his camp
by Marienburg, August 5, 1410 :—
“habito diligenti respectu ad constantis fidelitatis indicia, quae
Nobis consules, communitas, cives et incolae civitatis nostrae gdan-
ensis exhibuerunt et... poterunt exhibere in futurum, horum
intuitu cupientes ipsos gratiarum nostrarum prosequi favoribus et
fidelitatis constantiam Nobis et coronae nostri regni Poloniae per
ipsos exhibendam continuo reddere promptiores, praedictaeque civi-
tatis nostrae gdanensis conditionem facere meliorem. ...” Dogiel,
Cod. dipl. Regni Pol et M. Ducatus Lith., IV (ViILNaE, 1764),
fol. 83. The authenticity of this charter, wrongly called in question
by Caro, III (1869), 341, has been admitted by Hirsch, 41, and has
now been attested in full. Cf. in Toeppen, Acten der Staendetage
Preussens, I (1878), 106, and Simson, IV, 121, the authentic copies
of this charter from the Dantzig MSS. The second supplementary
royal charter for Dantzig, as well as for Thorn and Elbing, was on
August 1oth. The triumphal entry of the Royal envoy into the city
and the doing homage to the King by Dantzig, August 7th. The
retreat of the King from Marienburg, September; the surrender of
Dantzig to the Order, October 1410.
11. The murder of Letzkow and his associates: Invited by the
Commander Henry Reuss von Plauen, they came to the Castle of
Dantzig on April 6th, their corpses were given back to the city by
Plauen on April 13, 1411. The bodies were placed in the church of
Notre Dame, in the chapel of St. Hedviga, with a stone inscription
half-effaced but remaining to this day, which gives only the names of
the victims and the date of the murder. A description of the murder as
‘* sullicher schentlicher, boshafftiger tat,” in the Dantzig Chronicles
of the Order, Scr. rer. pruss., IV (1870), 376 sqq., as also the account
of how “ Frau Anna went before the Commander and spoke.” Prus-
sians have essayed purposely to call in question this plain Dantzig
evidence, accepted by Schutzius and other earlier historians of the
city, Voigt, Gesch. Preussens, VII, 143 sqq. (1835), later Caro, III,
340, turning the thing upside down, clearing the Teutonic murderers,
and making traitors of the victims. Then even Simson, I, 140,
justifies the slaying in a way which bears sad witness to the disruptive
influence wielded even on such a conscientious investigator by the
unmoral special pleading of the newer Prussian historical school:
‘‘ The Order had to act to keep the stubborn city from getting to be
too much for them.” MReversely the honest Loeschin, Beitraege
NOTES 107
zur Gesch. Danzigs, III (1837), 77 sqq., proved in his study of
K. Letzkau that the conclusions of Voigt were false. So, too, Hirsch,
Ser. rer. pruss., IV, 385 sqq., in analysing the Dantzig reports about
Letzkau, rejected the unfair conclusions of Caro and finally settled the
authenticity of the Dantzig report as to the murder and the Order’s
guilt. Cf. Graske, Der Hochmeister von Plauen im Konflikte mit
den Staedten des Ordenslandes Preussen, in The Journal of West-
Prussian History, XX XV (1896), 7 sqq.
12. The first Charter of Casimir Jagiellon for Dantzig, Elbing,
June 16, 1454: ‘‘das wir fleysig angesehen haben die namhaftige
manner burgemeyster, rothmanne, scheppen und ganczer gemeyne
unser rechten statt Danczke, ire getrawe und stete beystendikeit,
do sie in gedechtnisz wider brochten die mennygung der freyheit
un der goben der vordrigen geczeiten des reichs von Polan Konigen
und herezugen, unseren vorfarn . .. noch dirlaufung so vil joren,
in welchen sie die krewczigern mit dem yoch der dinste verbunden
woren, zcu uns als zcu iren rechten und eynigen hern und erblinge
widdergekart haben, und zcu uns zugeflogen sein, und sich uns und
unsern nochkomlingen, des reichs von Polan Konigen, ewiglichin
undir gegebin haben, von naturlicher begerlichkeit dorczu gereiczet.
... Toeppen, Act. der Staendetage Ost und Westpreussens, IV
(1884), 282; reprinted by Simson, IV, N. 137, with slight changes
from, the original Charter in the Dantzig Archives. Cf. Karnkowski,
De iure province. majorumque civit. Prussiae (Crac., 1574), s.p. The
Supplementary Charter about the Taxes of Dantzig, Piotrkow, July 9,
1455:
The arrival of the King in Dantzig, May ist, the doing of homage
by the city, May 9, 1455. The Great Charter.of Casimir Jagiellon,
Dantzig, May 15, 1457: ‘“... die burgermeister, radmannen,
scheppen und ganczen gemeynen unnsir stat Danczik, unnsir liben
getrewen, die stete getrewenheit, . . . vormittelst welchen szie uns
in wedirwerbunge unnsir lande Prewszen, die doruch unrechte und
unbilliche bekommerunge von unnsirm reiche entfremdet woren, mit
steten getrewheit und vestem gemute haben beygestanden .. . geben
wir und vorleyen unnsir stat Danczk . . . das sie zcu ewigen geczeiten
nymands vor eynen herrn halden noch gehorsam zcu weszen seyn
sullen in weltlichin sachen, wenne alleyne uns und unnsirn noch-
kommlingen, konigin zu Polan.”’
The supplementary charter, May 25th; the departure from
Dantzig, June 7, 1457; the later court charter for Dantzig, Cracow,
January 28, 1472; vid. Curicke, Beschreibung der Stadt Dantzig,
153 sqq.; Dogiel, IV, 157, 160 sqq. (juramentum Gedanensium) ;
Toeppen, 314, 367, 369; Simson, 138, 141-2, 144. Casp. Schutzius,
contin. Chytraeus, Wahrhaffte und eigentliche Beschreibung des
Landes Preussen . . . darinne auch die Ankunfft und Erbawung der
koeniglichen Stadt Danzig (1599), 203. Cf., on the other hand, the
miserable bare wrath of Caro, V (1886), 105.
The taking of Marienburg by the Poles and the men of Dantzig,
August 6, 1460; the inscription in the Artushof: “‘ Danzker machts
ein End dem Streit!’’ The Peace of Thorn, October 19, 1466. Cf.
108 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Simson, Dantzig im 13 jaehrigen Krieg, 1454-66, Journal for
West Pr. Hist., XXIX (1891); ib., XLVII (1904), 116 sqq., the im-
proving of the city’s Coat of Arms by Casimir Jagiellon, Insign. urbis
ged. auctio, May 24, 1457: ‘‘ zcu czeychen grosser .. . getruwheit
unnsir stat Danczke czu unnsirer koniglicher maiestat . . . haben wir
vorgenommen, czu unnsir und unnsirs reiches zcu Polan und derselben
unnsir stat Danczke ere und czirheith, usz sunderlicher koniglicher
gnad und gunst, derselben stat Dantczke wopfen zcu vornewen und
zcu vorbessern, so das die stat Danczke hirnachmals eyne guldene
crone im obirsteyle ires schildes habe .. .,’”’ cf. Warschauer, Die
Wappen und Banner von Danzig, ib., LVI (1916), 160 sqq. On the
hearty relation between the city and King Casimir, cf. Kromer,
Hist. of Poland in the year 1468, in the Collection of historical writers,
III (1767), 690. Cf. Matricularum Regni Poloniae Summaria, I,
Casimiri regis, ed. Wierzbowski (1905), passim.
13. Swiencki, Historical Facts about the City of Dantzig, as well
as the Sea-traffic and lordship of the Poles in the Baltic (Warsaw,
1811), 4, 7 sqq., and Description of Ancient Poland, I (1828), 338 sqq.
Cf. L. Golembiowski, On the Polish Fleet, The Scientific Review,
II (1843), 12, 92 sqq.
14. Boucicaut, Livre des faicts, Nouv. coll. de mémoires de France,
II (1836): ‘‘en Prusse ... tous passerent au royaume de Lecto,
ot ils firent grande destruction de Sarrasins ’’ (1390). The Prussian
expeditions of the Earl of Derby (afterwards Henry IV) with a thousand
men in his suite (1390—92) : he came to Dantzig via Puck on August Io,
1390, set out for the Lithuanian forest on August 21st, was before
Wilno from September 11th to October 7th, returned to Dantzig on
February 15, 1391, Scr. rer. pruss., II (1863), 785 sqq. On the trade
of Dantzig with England in the fourteenth century, vid. Hirsch,
98 sqq. On the trade with Portugal, Spain, Italy, vid. Journal of
West-Prussian Hist., V—-VI (1881-2).
15. Nimmert, Danzigs Verhaeltnis zu Polen, 1466-92, ibid. LIII
(1911), 111 sqq.; as to the salutary results of the deliverance by
Poland from the Order’s economic exploitation, ib., 179 sqq. Cf.
Lauffer, Danzigs Schiffs- und Wasserwesen am Ende des XV Jhrts,
Journal of West Pruss. Hist., XXXIII (1894). King Alexander
reached Dantzig May 25, 1504, received the homage of the city June 2nd,
and confirmed the Charters of Casimir June 3rd.
16. The report of the Dantzig envoys on Sigmund’s election, in
Piotrkow, December 1506, in Finkel, The Election of Sigmund, I
(1910), 263 sqq.; cf. Balzer, Corp. jur. pol., 1506-22 (1906), sub voce,
Gdansk. On the quarrel of Sigmund with Dantzig in 1525, vid.
Lorkiewicz, The Revolt of Dantzigs (1880), and cf. Finkel Bibliography,
NN. 25787 sqq., also Acta Tomiciana, vols. VII, VIII, Matricul.
R. Pol. summaria IV", Sigismundi I regis (1910-12) ; Hanserecesse,
vol. XXIII-IV (1910-13); also Zivier, A New History of Poland,
I (1915), 305 sqq.; Simson, II (1916), 79 sqq.
17. The stay of Sigmund in Dantzig, April roth to July 23, 1525:
the Statutes of Sigmund I, Gedani, July 20, 1525: “... visum
fuit clementia nostra dignum, ut potius salutarem medicum, quam
NOTES 109
severum vindicem tantorum malorum ageremus.. . statuimus et
ordinamus quod deinceps . . . centum cives ad consulendum et ad
ferenda suffragia ex quolibet quattuor capitalium opificum ordine
vocari et adhiberi debeant . . .” Dogiel, fol. 240 sqq., Volum. leg.,
I, fol. 454 sqq., Simson, IV?, N. 153.
18. Sigmund August confirmed the charters for Dantzig, Decem-
ber 10, 1548. For the visit of the King in Dantzig from July 8th to
September 1, 1552, vid. Card. Hosii Epp. in Acta hist., ed. by the
Cracow Academy (1886-88), NN. 783, 831, 51; Guenther, Vom Koenigs-
besuch in Danzig, 1552, in Mitteilungen des West-Preussischen
Geschichtsvereins, XV (1916), 23 sqq. The religious charters of Sig-
mund August for Dantzig, Vilnae 5 Juli, 1557 (date corrected by
Simson, II? (1917), 204): ‘‘ nos qui ex officio nostro regio infirmitati
hominum mederi et conscientiis illorum consulere tenemur.. .
permittimus et admittimus senatui populoque civitatis nostrae gedan-
ensis liberam administrationem et liberum usum coenae dominicae
sub utraque specie ...’’ Lengnich, Preuss. Gesch. (Danz., 1722),
I], 155 sqq., and Jus. publ. civit. ged. (1900), 494 ; Simson, IV (1918),
N. 164. The strivings towards union: vid. Constitutiones Karnko-
vianae, I4 mart., confirmed by the King at the Diet of Warsaw, 1570:
noteworthy are the democratic rulings “‘de oneribus aequis,” and
“locus et jus suffragii inter ordines civitatis artificibus opificum
restitutus,’’ etc., cf. Volumina legum, II, fol. 108 sqq. Cf. Karn-
kowski, De jure, ut supra; Simson, Westpreussens und Danzigs Kampf
gegen die polnischen Unionsbestrebungen in den letzten Jahren des
Koenigs Sigmund August, Journal for West Prussian Hist., XXIII
(1897), 145 sqq., and Gesch. Danzigs, II (1918), N. 169, who twice
reprints the statutes of Karnkowski without knowing the text of Volu-
mina legum.
-I9. The dispute of Dantzig with King Stephen Batory: Pawinski,
Stephen Batory before Dantzig, 1576-7, in Sources of Pol. Hist.,
Ill (1877). See ibid., NN. 181-90, Conditiones gedanenses, the
pardoning of the City by Batory, Marienburg, December 12, 1577,
reprinted as inedita by Simson, II, NN. 170-71. Ibid., NN. 173-4,
the edict of Batory tolerating the Augsburg Confession in Dantzig,
together with the confirmation of the city’s charters, December 16,
1577. On the splendid relations that followed between the city and
King Stephen, and the granting of the “ tractatus portorii,” in
Warsaw, February 26, 1585, which rescinded the Constitution of
Karnkowski at the requests of the citizens, etc., cf. Curicke, 164 sqq.,
Lengnich, Loeschin, passim.; Goldmann, Danz. Verfassungskaempfe
unter polnischer Herrschaft (1901); Simson, II?, 321, I13, N. 176,
20. Dantiscus, Jonas propheta: ‘‘ Urbs nova, dives opum, Dantis-
cum sive Gedanum, Accipe divina quae tibi mente loquor. Est
breve tempus adhuc: si non peccata relinques, hoc quibus exundas
tempore, fracta rues. Crevisti cito: sic etiam Superis mala grata
Decresces, instant jam tua fata tibi. . . . Comprimet annonae Vistula
clausus iter. . . . Externis tunc praesidiis frustrata manebis Divi-
tiisque tuis despoliata gemes .. .” J. de Curiis Dantisci Opera, ep.
olim varmiensis poem. et hymna (Vratisl., 1764), 138 sqq. Klonowicz,
110 DANTZIG AND POLAND
in his celebrated poem, “ Flis” (The Raftsman, 1595), warns the
Polish squire of the exploitation practised by the merchants of Dantzig,
advises to sell grain only for cash, etc.: ‘‘ Already here in Dantzig
there are store-houses and factories, . . . and there are traders and
farmers from far and near. Ask first whether he has cash, .. . for
if you take a note for your produce, the useless scrap of paper will
only be a nuisance to you. Be careful. And when you have de-
livered your goods, duly paid for, into the red store-houses, see that
you get back at once to your dear Poland.” Kochanowski, in his
poem The Satyre (1585), criticizes the nobility for thinking that
it is “the greatest thing in life in their eyes to know the way to
Dantzig. with rye and potash.’ Christopher Opalinski, Satires
(1650), ‘On the Luxury in Poland’: ‘‘ We enrich the foreigners
in buying from them at high prices goods, silks, and made-up cloth,
what they call ‘roba per la Polonia.’ They know how to get away
with our grain, which we sell them cheap.” In similar vein (Soli-
kowski), in his political pamphlet, The Talk in Kruszwitz between
Piast and his Guest, February 19, 1573 :—
‘‘ The Guest : Now that the Crown has let the Port of Danzig, the
eye with which it looks into the world outside, fall in ruins, ...
everything goes out of Poland each year to Germany, Italy, Hungary,
and Turkey, for cloth, linen, silk, satin, wine, nectar, and spices. This
huge export passes all moderation. . .. Piast: Every ruler and
every people have more interest in sea-power than in land-power,
for . . . who has the latter and does not use it or even lets it be
taken away, lets every advantage slip and brings on himself mis-
fortunes: he who has been free becomes a slave, and the rich man
becomes poor.’’——Czubek. The political pamphlets of the first Polish
Interregnum (1906), 51, 479.
21. Itis striking that this view of the Polish authors of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, as to the exploitation of Poland on the
part of the merchants of Dantzig, agrees fully with the conclusions
of a modern German investigator, Naudé, Die Getreidehandelspolitik
der europ. Staaten vom 13 bis 18 Jhdt., Acta boruss. (1896), 345,
373, 384 sqq.: “‘ the men of Dantzig were able by the use of clever
means to bring it about, that the Poles remained in ignorance of the
situation on the market, that they let the Danzig traders get their
grain cheap, but on the other hand had to pay dearly for the salt,
wine, silk, spices, herrings, which they got from Dantzig alone. The |
essence of the whole matter was this: that Poland became steadily
poorer, so that it was quite apparent, and Dantzig rose in splendid
prosperity.”
At the same time one finds the conviction that the coast and the
sea-port is a necessity for Poland, as well as pride in the Polish
Dantzig, on the pages of many early Polish writers. Already Dlugosz,
I, 3, 55: ‘‘ Gdansk, a Polonis populata . . . nedum apud Polonos,
verum apud ceteras gentes et nationes vicinas memorabile, haud
magnum quidem oppidum, sed frequenti emporio celebre, quod mul-
tarum, verum merces in illud flumine Wysla, qua illic . . . miscitur
Oceano Sarmatico.” Cf. the characteristic report, mentioned by
NOTES W1
Bielski, Chronica, of the last campaign of Wladislaw Jagiello against
the Order (1433), ‘‘ how the Poles marched to Dantzig, and camped
before the city, where in the course of four days they conquered
the surrounding districts. And the Polish knights on reaching the
sea, embarked and sailed upon it, rejoiced that they had reached it
and had conquered its shores,” Collected Polish Hist. Writings, II
(1764), 302. (Stryjkowski) Gwagnin, Chronicles of European Sar-
matia (1575): ‘‘ The glory of the city of Dantzig. . . . The tradesmen
here are famous and wealthy. In regard to its buildings and their
position, to the beauty of the collections and the variety at the
markets, to the easy approach to the river and the sea, to the in-
describable numbers of the burghers living here, as well as the number
of merchants who come here from afar, lastly in regard to its wealth
and war-materials, the city can be listed among the very first of
Europe. In-a word, it is a mighty, thrifty, and famous place, and
one could not easily find one where tradesmen are better off,’’ Ibid.,
IV (1768), 368 sq. Stan. Sarnicki, Descr. vet. et nov. Poloniae:
“ quicquid habet Polonia, Lituania, Mazovia, tanquam, in oesophagum,
Gedanum intrat et in transmarinas regiones avehitur; et rursus,
quicquid affertur ex Germania, Anglia, Gallia, Hispania, Dania,
Suecia, per universam Sarmatiam digitibus gedanensium civium
dispensatur . . .,” ed. Mizleri-Koloff, Collectio, I (1761), 250.
22. The grain exports from Dantzig, in round figures: 1608,
87,000 lastes (measures); 1618, 116,000 (corrected 129,000); 1649,
100,000 ; 1655 (a war-year), 11,000; 1659, 542; 1662, 36,000; 1669,
47,000; vid. Loeschin, I, 397. These figures do not quite agree
with the tables of the grain exported from Dantzig 1649-1799 as given
by Czacki in The Laws of Lithuania and Poland, II (1861) 267 sqq.
Cf. the table of the exports from Dantzig given by Forten, Documents
to the history of the Baltic Question, I (1889), 165 sqq., N. 75: and
The Baltic Question in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century,
1544-1648, I (1893), 409 sqq., 530, 590, 628 sqq., II (1894), 458 sqq.,
and again Studies in the Archives of Luebeck and Dantzig, in the
Monthly. Review of the Russ. Ministry for Education, CCLXX
(Petersburg, 1890), 310 sqq. Cf. also the report of the /legate Bo-
lognetto, May 11, 1583, on the economic conditions in Poland and
the trade of Dantzig, published by Korzeniowski, Informatio de
rebus oeconomicis Poloniae, Scr. rer. pol. of the Cracow Academy,
XV (1894), 217 sqq. Cf. the remarks of Behring, Mitteilungen des
Westprussissen Geschichtsvereins, I (1902), 66 sqq. On Dantzig’s
trade with Turkey in 1613, ibid., III (1904), 58 sqq. Czermak, On
the Corn-trade of Dantzig in the Seventeenth Century, uses a MS.
of Loyko, but without giving precise details, Reports of the Cracow
Academy (1898), N. 5, 8 sqq. The data of Szelongowski, From, the
History of the Rivality of England, Germany, Russia and Poland
(1910), 4 sqq., about the figures of Dantzig’s trade, are unsystematic
and inaccurate. Kutrzeba, The Vistula in the History of the Polish
Econ. Evolution, in the Review Econ. News (1918), NN. 33-9, gives
several, sometimes very incomplete tables as to the export trade of
Dantzig 1490-92 and 1608-74, (Cf, Simson, II? (1917), 269, II5 (1918),
a0) DANTZIG AND POLAND
516.sqq. In comparing the earlier and later export figures one must
remember that a Dantzig ‘‘laste,’”” holding 60 Prussian bushels, was
the same as 28 Warsaw “ korsee.’’ The laste of wheat weighs 2,550
kilograms, that of rye 2,455 kilograms, that of oats 2,160 kilograms.
On the average, then, a laste of grain makes about two or two and
one-half present-day English tons.
23. Sigmund III was in Dantzig in 1587, 1593, 1594, 1598, and
in July, 1623, when at the news of his presence, Gustavus Adolphus
appeared in the gulf, threatening the city with the Swedish fleet.
Cf. Damus, Danzig und der nord. Krieg, in The Journal of West
Pruss. Hist., XII. The Diet’s decisions in favour of Dantzig in 1565
are in Vol. leg., II, fol. 686; in 1626 and 1628 (a special charter for
English cloths), 1629, 1631, 1632: ‘‘ Having regard to the firm loyalty
of our city of Dantzig toward Ourself and the Republic, ... we
decree that all grain carried on the Vistula is to be brought only to
Dantzig and nowhere else,” 1633, 1641 (about the right to stamp
goods), 1647, Vol. leg., III, fol. 524, 580, 616, 656, 680, 737, 811, IV,
fols. II, 74, 194.
24. On the visit of Wladislaw IV and his consort, Maria Gonzaga,
in Dantzig (1646), cf. Laboureur, Hist. et relation du voyage de la
Royne de Pologne (Paris, 1647), 140-72. Cf. Niemcewicz, Collected
Historical Memoirs, IV (1839), 134 sqq.; further Roepell, Koenigin
Louise-Marie von Polen in Dantzig, in the Journal of West Pruss.
Hist., XXII (1887). A view of the triumphal arches on the occasion
of the Queen’s coming, in Kruszynski, Dantzig Antiquities, 16.
25. Dantzig, Carolus Gustavus and Jan Casimir: Rudawski,
Polish Hist. of the time of Jan Casimir, 1648-60, ITI (ed. 1855), 137 sqq. ;
Litt. regis Suec. ac com. Steinbock ad Gedanenses (1656) ; Lengnich,
Gesch. der preuss. Lande, VII (Danz., 1734), 146, 158, 173, giving
the words of the chancellor of state, Korycinski, “ that in this same
Dantzig alone the whole state has been maintained against the
violence, tyranny, and cunning, of a terrible foe,’’ 221 sq., 262. The
resolution of the Diet in Dantzig’s favour, 1658, under the caption,
“The Insuring of Dantzig’: ‘the rare virtue, faith and stability
of our city of Dantzig, even more than before have been attested now
especially during the Swedish War: they are worthy to serve as an
example to all, and deserve our high respect ’—1698, Vol. leg., IV,
fols. 559, 618. ,
26. The Treaty of Oliva, May 3, 1660 (a day ever since of solemn
holiday in Dantzig), in § 153 conditioned the freedom of Dantzig’s
trade, on pre-war footing, vid. Dumont, Corp. dipl. VI (1739), 303,
and Chwalkowski, Jus publ. reg. Pol. (Regiom., 1676), 281.
27. Dantzig and Sobieski: Decretum Joannis, III, Gedani, 1678,
Zaluski, Epistolae Familiares, I (Brunsbergae, 1710), fols. 721-37;
Polish Geog. Dict. II, 520; Sierakowski, The Visit of John III Sobieski
in East Prussia, 1677~78,.in the Annual of the Scientific Society of
Thorn, XIX (1912), 209 sqq., with a special description of the stay
there in the light of Sobieski’s secret plans to take East Prussia from
the Grand Elector. Cf. Finkel, Bibl., N. 4116.
28. Peter the Great in Dantzig: Lengnich, Gesch. der preuss.
-
NOTES 113
Lande, IX (1755), 294 sqq.; Loeschin, II, 127, 131, and Beitraege,
III, 92; also Foltz in the Reports on West Pruss. Hist., VI (1907),
68 sqq.
29. Dantzig and Stanislaw Leszczynski: Boyé, Stan. Leszczynski
(1898), Askenazy, The last Royal Election but One, in Two Cen-
turies, I (1901). An interesting relation of the Dantzig deputation
to St. Petersburg asking for pardon, 1734, is in Loeschin, Beitraege, I
(1837), 38 sqq.
30. Lengnich, Jus publicum civitatis ged. (together with his
biography); Jus publ. Prussiae Polonae (1758); Jus. publ. Regni
Pol. On Dantiscus, cf. Siemienski, Literary Portraits, I (1865). On
Hevelius, cf. Warsaw Memorial (1809), the monthly Warsaw Library
(1843), also Skimborowicz, Life and Works of Hevelius (1860). On
the Chodowiecki family vid. Mitteilungen des Westpreussischen Ge-
_ schichtsvereins, III, 74 sqq., IV (1905), 17 sqq. Cf. Rastawiecki, A
‘Dictionary of Polish Painters, and Oettingen, Chodowiecki von Berlin
nach Danzig, 1773 (1895).
31. Polish printing-presses in Dantzig: J. S. Bandtkie, History
of the Printing-offices in the Kingdom of Poland, I (1826), 82 sqq.,
104 sqq.; also Loeschin, History of the Dantzig Printing-presses
(1840) ; Mankowski, History of the Polish Prints and Literature in
West Prussia, in the Annual of the Scientific Soc. of Thorn, XVIII
(1911), 79 Ssqq., gives an exact Polish-Dantzig Bibliography, from the
first printing, the Polish ABC—1528 (?), until the end of the eighteenth
century. In all 219 items are given, among them some, chiefly of
the eighteenth century, of special interest.
32. The Polish language in Dantzig: Loeschin I, 305, 385; Sim-
son II, 371; cf. Hirsch, Gesch. der akad. Gymnasiums in Dantzig
(1837). Decisive, however, on this point is the witness of Cellarius,
overlooked until now but unbiased: Andr. Cellarius, Descr. regni
Poloniae (Amstel., 1659): ‘‘incolarum urbem (Gdanzk) habitantium
magna est multitudo, ex Germanis, Polonis, aliisque nationibus con-
flata; Germani tamen ceteris numero superiores sunt, et hos Poloni
sequuntur; ac utrius nationis idioma, germanicum et polonicum,
in urbe usitatum est, adeo ut plures incolae reperiuntur qui utramque
linguam, callent,’’ ed. Mizleri-Koloff, Collectio magna, I, 626 (Vars.,
1761).
33. The export of grain from Dantzig 1700-52, and 1752-92,
Loeschin II, 207, 311; cf. the Tables of Czacki, 215, also Naudé,
Getreidehandel der Europ. Staaten, 387 sqq., and Schmoller-Naudé,
Die Getreidehandelspolitik Brandenburg-Preussens bis 1740, Acta
boruss. (1901), 258, which gives the exact details of the exports of
Dantzig from 1715-35. Cf. Schmoller-Naudé-Skalweit, id. 1740-56
(1910), 137, 166, 468 sq., 563, with curious data of the already bitter
_ competition waged by Stettin and Koenigsberg with Dantzig.
34. The jubilee of the Deliverance of Dantzig from the Teutonic
Knights: Of the first one, 1554, no news remain, of the second one,
1654, a medal with the inscription ‘‘ Gedani annos ante ducentos.. .
ab infanda crucigerorum, tyrannide liberatae tertium libertatis suae
saeculum, regnante Io. Casimero, feliciter inchoanti memoria,” cf.
8
114 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Kruszynski, 27. The tercentenary, 1754, had a medal struck with
this inscription on its circumference: ‘‘ prussiaco-lechici Casimirus
foederis autor . . .”” and on the face: “‘ Deo auspice Augusto) II]
Poloniarum rege . . . jubilaeum gedanense unionis prutenopolonae
memoriae sacrum ...’’ Gottl. Wernsdorff, Oratio saec .. . in audi
torio Athenaei ged. magn. senatus jussa (Gedani, February 27, 1754)
“‘ Libertatem, jura, immunitates vestras, moenia, tecta, possessiones
bona omnia, vestra sacra, securitatem, otium, vestram vestrorumqué
omnium vitam, conjuges, liberos, indigenae, nobilitatis salutem . .
augustissimorum regum Poloniae praesidio . . . conservatam atque
restitutam videtis. Nihil horum omnium vobis integrum, nihil salvum
esset, si isti adhuc domini capitibus nostris insultarent, quorum moles
tissimum jugum majores vestri diu pertulerunt, et qui rapinis, con
tumeliis, injuriis, cruciatibus, caedibus, provinciam vestram exinanire
evertere, extinguere allaborabant, et extinxissent tandem, nisi. .
anno abhuc trecentesimo, profligata equitum teutonicorum tyrannide
mitius imperium clementissimorum Poloniae Regum explendisset . . .’
(a detailed account of the Crusaders’ crimes, of Letczkow’s murde
of the brutalities done to the people, “‘ erga rusticanos homines ¢
miseram plebeculam, ” and especially the violence inflicted on the
trade of the city, “in mercaturam quae altrix et quasi anima rei
publicae est”). Cf. J. B. Chr. Freislich, Cantate bey dem Jubelfes
der Stadt Danzig (Danz., February 27, 1754) :—
“So hub auch Danzig sein gebeugtes Haupt empor
Und sahe sehnsuchtsvoll Dir, Casimir, entgegen.
Du kamst, Dir folgte Freiheit, Ruh und Segen. . .
Gott, lass uns dies mit Thraenen und mit Blut
Sehr theur erkauftes Gut
Nie wiederum verlieren ...
Es wird, bey Polens Schutz, auch Dantzigs Wohlergehn
Spaet unerschuettert stehn.”’
Cf. Fr. Klein, Das befreyte Preussen an dem dritten Jubelfeste de
Stadt Danzig (Danz., February 27, 1754) :—
** Wie ein entfuehrtes Kind, das seine Mutter siehet,
In ihren offnen Arm, verfolgt von Raeuber, fliehet,
Sie nimmt es in den Schooss, . . . es kuesst die milden Haend
So liebreich machtest Du der Preussen Noth ein Ende,
O Polen! als es sich, vom Orden neu bedrueckt,
In Deine Arme warf . . . O Danzig, dieses Glueck,
Das Polen Dir gebar ...
Wie viel vollkommner muss es nun Dein Buerger schmecken, —
Da schon dreyhundert Jahr Dich Polens Fluegel decken.”
Cf. J. P. Titius, Oratio saec. (Ged., March 6, 1754) :-—
‘‘ (Gedanum) crudeli ac barbara tyrannide convulsa . ... incom
parabili Jagellonici sanguinis benignitate et clementia recreari
pit...’ (In a long tale, praise of the Polish Kings and of
tolerant and practical kindness Poland had shown for Dantzig
trade) ; Titius, Carmina saec. quae in panegyri dantiscana canebantt
(Ged., 1745): ‘‘ des weissen Adlers Kraft (hat) Schutz und Freyhei
Dir geschafft.’’
NOTES 115
35. The occupation of East Prussia with Koenigsberg by Russia
was provided for in the Austro-Russian pacts of Maria Theresa
with Elizabeth, February 2, 1757, April 1, 1760, vid. Martens, Recueil
I, 269. On the Russian occupation of Koenigsberg, vid. Russ. Anti-
quities, LXXXIX. On Tichon Jakubowski and the Orthodox Church
in Koenigsberg, 1758-62, cf. Reports of the Jaroslav Eparchial News
(1893), N. 29, also the Woronzoff Archives, IV (1873), 315 sqq., and
The Russian Rule in East Prussia, in Reports of West Pruss. Hist.
(1915), XIV, 54 sqq. On the intended seizure of Dantzig by Russia,
vid. the Russian Note of December 4th, letter of Bruehl, December 18,
1760, Eelking, Letters of Count Bruehl (1854), 167 sqq. Cf. Lengnich,
458, and on the negotiations of the Vice-Chancellor Woronzoff with
the Court of Versailles in this matter, Ségur, Politique de tous les
cabinets, I (Paris, 1802), 161.
36. The first brutalities of Frederic the Great, the control-station
of Marienwerder, the cause of the Dissidents, etc., vid. Schmitt, Hist.
of the Rule of Stanislaw August (1868), also Damus, Die Stadt Danzig
gegenueber der Politik Friedrichs des Grossen und Friedrich-Wil-
helms II (1887). Cf. The Polit. Corresp. of Frederic the Great, and the
Collection (Sbornik) of the Russian Hist. Soc. (which Damus has not
consulted), passim. The Dantzig Diploma of Catherine II, April 5,
1767, confirming the earlier one of Anna of May to, 1736, declared
virtually the sovereignty of Russia over the city, even against Poland,
in guaranteeing in a one-sided way the sanctity of the Assurance
of August III, and prescribing for Dantzig ‘‘ that it seek refuge with
confidence and humility under our protection and that of our suc-
cessors, hereafter as heretofore,’’ Sbornik, XXXVII, NN. 318-19,
521, 541, 550-0, 563-4, 572-3, 580, LXVII, 357, 367, LXXII; also
Politische Correspondenz Friedrichs des Grossen, XXIV-XXXI1V
(r911). Frédéric le Gr., Mém., 1763-75, Oeuvres, VI, 12: ‘“‘ comme
il était évident que le possesseur de la Vistule et du port de Danzig
assujettirait cette ville avec le temps, on jugea qu’il ne fallait pas
arréter une négociation aussi importante (le partage) pour un avantage,
qui proprement n’était que différé.”’ |
37. Dantzig and England: On earlier relations and in part their
differences, vid. Loeschin, Simson, Journal of West Pruss. Hist.,
passim. The Privilege Patent of Charles II for Dantzig, Whitehall,
_ July 18, 1668. The Anglo-Dantzig Treaty, Dantz., October 22, 1706.
The English Residents in Dantzig: Fr. Gordon, 1632-42, John
Robinson, 1706, and his curious opinion “‘ that there is not in any
place ‘of Europe so great a number of British natives and their pos-
terity, whose industry God has blessed with such plenty and affluence
as here in Dantzig’’; Jac. Jeffries, 1721 ; Arch. Gibsone, 1724-50;
_ Trevor Correy, 1754-80; Alex. Gibsone, 1780-93. Cf. Michael,
Englands Stellung zur ersten Theilung Polens (1890), Litwinski,
Polish and British Interests in Dantzig, December 4, 1918.
. 38. Frederic to Maltzan (in London), Potsd., April 18, 29, 1771:
_ ‘je ne vois, pourquoi on s’embarrasse tant dans votre ile des affaires
de la Pologne. . . . L’Angleterre n’a aucun sujet de s’embarrasser
_ des affaires de la Pologne; elles lui sont effectivement tout-a-fait
Ke
s
’
116 DANTZIG AND POLAND
étrangéres ...la cour britannique ... peut se mettre l’esprit
entiérement en repos a leur compte,’’ etc., Pol. Corr., NN. 19846,
76sq. The Memorial of Bukaty to the Earl of Suffolk, July 11, 1772.
Vid. also J. Williams, The rise, progress and present state of the
northern governments, II (Lond., 1777), 555: ‘‘ the intelligent part
of mankind will undoubtedly be amazed, that a prince (Frederic IT),
whose family has received their all, except the lakes and sand-banks
of Brandenbourg, from the crown of Poland, should on every occasion
endeavour to destroy that power, to which he and his ancestors have
been so much obliged. But by recurring to history, it will be clearly
seen that this now illustrious family, from the time that they were
first distinguished among the common robbers, who hid their plunder
in the marshes of Brandenbourg, down to this day, have adhered so
closely to the serpents’ politics, that they have always stung the bosom
which warmed and supported them.”
39. The treaty of the First Partition, between Prussia and Austria,
St. Petersb., July 25, 1772, §1: ‘‘S.M. le roi de Prusse . . . se dé-
sistant en méme temps de toute prétention sur la ville de Dantzig,
prendra, en guise d’équivalent, le reste de la Prusse polonaise.’”’ The
Pact of Partition between Prussia and Poland, Warsaw, September 18,
1773, §2: ‘excluding the city of Dantzig and its territory, ...
the Prussian King renouncing every claim to the city of Dantzic and
ts territory.’”” The Prussian-Polish Acte séparé conten. tout ce
qui a rapport au commerce, Warsaw, March 18, 1775, §6: “la ville
de Dantzig étant totalement étrangére au roi de Prusse, sera assujettie
aux mémes lois et conditions que l’étranger .. .”’ Vol. leg. VIII,
fols. 42, 80.
40. The occupation of Dantzig’s harbour by Frederic’s forces,
September 16, 1772. Cf. Jantzen, Réflex. sur la propriété du port
de Dantzig (Dantz., 1773) ; also Johanna Schopenhauer, Jugend- und
Wanderbilder (ed. 1884), XI. Cf. Aus Gralaths Berichten ueber
die erste Theilung Polens, in Reports of West Pruss. Hist. Society, I
(1902), 27 sq. On the taking of the peninsula Hela, vid. Stephan,
Die Ansprueche Preussens auf Hela, 1772, in Reports of West Pruss.
Hist. Soc., VIII (1909), 60 sqq. Cf. Journal of West Pruss. History,
XLIX.
41. The opposition of the Third Committee, June 1, 1774, and
the couplet nailed up on the Artushof at the time :—
“Der erste Junius 1774: Siegt, oder wenn der Preuss sich wider
uns empoert,
Sterbt, eine Sklavenwelt ist unser nicht mehr werth.”
The report of Geret, June 11, 1774, Schmitt, Materials, II (1857),
249 sq.; cf, Damus, 59 sq. On the cutting of the drinking water
of the Radun, vid. the Cabinet Order of Frederic, October 13,
1773, published first by Preuss, Friedrich der Grosse, Urkunden-
buch, IV (1834); rescinded by Royal order of October 27, 1773:
“‘ wegen Wassers fallen lassen,’’ cf. Pol. Corr. Friedrichs des Grossen,
XXXIV, also Klopp, Friedrich II (1860), 306 sq. Cf. the vain apology
NOTES 117
of Baer, Hat Friedrich der Stadt Danzig das Trinkwasser entzogen ?
in Reports of West Pruss. Hist. Society, V (1906), 50 sqq.
42. Dantzig and the Great Diet: Kalinka, The Four Year Diet,
(1884-8) ; Korzon, The Internal History of Poland in the reign of
King Stanislaw August, II (1897), 44 sq. Askenazy, The Polish-
Prussian Alliance (1919). The growth of the export trade and the
price of grain in Dantzig, 1789-92, Czacki, op. cit., cf. Loeschin II,
311. The short-sightedness of England in the matter of Dantzig,
Pitt’s advice to give it to the Prussians, in Prince Oginski’s Mémoires
I (1826), 92 sq. Oginski at that time personally negotiated with
Pitt in London on account of the Dantzig question. Hailes’ pro-
paganda papers, Mémoire sur les affaires de la Pologne, Réplique
a& Vexamen du mémoire (Vars., 1791). A Conversation between
a Pole, a Russian, and an Englishman in the matter of Dantzig, “‘ in
a Club” (Warsaw, 1791). Cf. Lord, The Second Partition of Poland
(1915), 170 sq.: “ Hailes displayed... .an amazing though often
a misguided and tactless activity.”” Staszic, Warnings for Poland
(Wars., January 4, 1790), foreword, 18 sqq.
43. The Letter of the Third Committee to Stanislaw August,
Dantz., September 13, 1790: ‘“‘ Das kleine Voelkchen der Danziger
. . . war lange nicht mehr gluecklich und seufzete nur, wartete...
auf Huelfe und Trost und erlag nicht. ... Eine Brotkruste und
Freiheit !—das die Losung der Einwohner ... Sire, unser Terri-
torium ist zerstueckelt, der Hafen ist noch immer im Besitz einer
maechtigen fremden Macht . . . Sire, wir stehen verzweifelt auf
einem schroffen Felsen, von der schrecklichen Brandung umgeben.
.. . Geruhen EW. Kgl. Maj. uns auf unsren gebahnten Weg, den
wir seit achtzehn Jahren umsonst suchen, durch einen Richtsteig zu
fuehren, oder wir muessen in die Brandung herab!”’ Cf. Zablocki
Writings (1903), 225 sqq. ‘‘On the Jibe pasted on the corners of
the Streets, to the effect that Dantzig and Thorn were for sale.’’
The Constitutional Privileges for the cities, April 18, 1791, § 12, Vol.
leg. IX.—Fisher, My Journey to Dantzig, October 29th to 31st, till
November 4, 1792, cf. Askenazy, Hist. Studies, II (1904), 479 sqq.
44. The Seizure of Dantzig: The treaty between Prussia and
Russia for the Second Partition, Pétersb., January 23, 1793, §4:
*“S.M. le Roi de Prusse s’engage de son cété a continuer de faire
cause commune avec S.M. l’Empereur des Romains dans la guerre...
contre les rebelles francaise et a ne faire ni paix ni tréve séparée . . .”’
(This condition was finally broken by Prussia at the Treaty of Basle
with France, 1795, which, however, did not hinder Prussia from
gaining in virtue of this pact indirect confirmation by France herself
of her seizure of Dantzig.) §5: ‘‘Et pour dédommagement des
dépenses qu’entraine et entrainera cette guerre (contre la France),
. . . S.M. Prussienne se mettra en possession de pays, villes et dis-
tricts (de la Grande Pologne) . . . en y ajoutant la ville de Dantzig
avec son territoire,’’ Martens, Recueil des Traités conclus par la Russie.
II, N. 44.
45. The declaration of His Majesty the Prussian King in the
matter of the taking of the city and territory of Dantzig, Berlin,
118 DANTZIG AND POLAND
February 24, 1793; reprinted in the Suppl. to the Warsaw Gazette
of March 27, 1793, N. 35; id., in French in the Hamburg Corr. (1793),
N. 48; cf. Angeberg, Recueil des actes traités, etc., concernant la
Pologne (1862), 304 sq.: ‘‘sans parler des dispositions hostiles que
cette ville (de Dantzig) entretient contre la Prusse depuis une suite
d’années, elle est devenue actuellement un des points de réunion de
cette secte rebelle (des jacobins), qui marche de crime en crime. . .
Un de ces malfaiteurs (Garnier) ...a été publiquement requ 4
Dantzig méme, et ce n’est qu’a force de remonstrances qu’on a pu
l’arracher des mains de ses défenseurs. Ce récent exemple, d’autres
abus fréquents d’une liberté mal comprise, les relations intimes que
les populations entretiennent en France et en Pologne avec un parti
qui, a l’aide de l’audace de ses principes, domine la majorité des —
citoyens bien intentionnés, et enfin la facilité que trouve l’ennemi
commun (la République francaise) & se procurer, grace au secours de
ses adhérents & Dantzig, des provisions de toute sorte, et particuliére-
ment du blé: telles sont les différentes circonstances qui ont appelé
l’attention du roi de Prusse sur cette ville et l’ont decidé & lui imposer ~
un frein nécessaire. . . . Aces fins, S.M. . . . a chargé son lieutenant-
général de Raumer, d’occuper, avec un corps de troupes suffisant,
la ville et le territoire de Dantzig. .. .”
46. The appearance of General Raumer with his army before
Dantzig, March 6, 1793. On the movements for defence of the city,
vid. Official Recess on the Events of the Occupation (1793), and
cf. the coloured account by Damus Die Stadt Danzig gegen die Politik,
162 sq., also Festschr. zur hundertjaehrigen Gedenkfeier der Vereini-
gung Danzigs mit dem Kgr. Preussen, 1793 (1893). Cf. also Pruemers,
Das Jahr, 1793 (1893), 42 sq., 746, 749; and Baer, Ein Beitrag zur
Gesch. der Erwerbung Danzigs durch Preussen, 1793, in Reports of
West Pruss. Hist., X (1911), 58 sqq. Protest of Henning, the Polish
Legation counsellor, in the name of the Republic and the Polish King,
against the taking of Dantzig by Prussia (Dahz., March 11, 1793).
The letter of the men of Dantzig to Stan. August, ad regem nostrum,
Ged., March 12, 1793: “ .. . (on the oppression of Raumer and the
Russian agent in Dantzig, Sokolowski) ad Seren. Reg. Majestatem
Vestram, Domine nost. clem. confugere constituimus illico, verum
id non licere amplius edocti, ...ab omni consilio quid juvaret
destituti, quocunque Sacr. Reg. Majestatis Vestrae auxilio inter-
Re ae
47. The Prussian Occupation Patent, March 25th; the taking of
the outer fortifications, March 26th ; the taking of the town, April 4th ;
the annulling of the terms of surrender by the ministerial proclamations,
April 18th, 19th. The act of doing homage to Prussia, May 7, 1793.
The incomparable address delivered on this occasion by the Regency
President of West Prussia, von Schleinitz, Dantzig, May 7, 1793:
“|. . Bei der Besitznahme Westpreussens (1772) befand sich Dantzig
in einem bluehenden Zustande. . .. Ein ununterbrochenes Glueck
haette vielleicht Uebermuth, Ueppigkeit und Hartherzigkeit erzeugen
koennen. Um euer jetziges Glueck in seinem ganzen Umfange zu
fuehlen, war es daher noethig, euch erst durch eine zwanzigjaehrige
NOTES 119
Erfahrung zu ueberzeugen, dass . . . getrennt von der Provinz, eine
glueckliche Existenz fuer euch unmoeglich war. Es war noethig,
euch erst davon zu wueberzeugen, dass ... (nicht) euer bisheriger
Schutz- und Oberherr (Polen) ...sondern dass nur Friedrich
Wilhelm der Mann war, bei Dem ihr Trost, Hilfe und Rettung finden
konntet. Ohne diese Ueberzeugung waeret ihr vielleicht mit weniger
Inbrunst in seine Vaterarme geflogen (!). Euer Sinken musste also
dazu dienen, euer Aufbluehen, euer Steigen desto mehr zu verherrlichen.
Der in Polen herrschende Partei- und Empoerungsgeist . . . drohte,
nach dem Beispiel Frankreichs, auch in diesem Lande alle buergerlichen,
politischen und religioesen Bande aufzuloesen .. .”
The Organization Patents for Dantzig, March 25, June 2, 1793;
the Administrative Reglaments, April 3, June 3, September 30,
1794; the Sea Customs Tariff, November 14, 1796, Novum Corpus
Constitutionum prussico-brandeburgensium, IX (Berolini, 1796), fols.
1472, 1609, 2107, 2201, 2289, 2317, 2623 sq., X (1801), 739 sq. Cf.
Simson, Gesch. der Danz. Willkuer (1904), 166 sq., Baer, Behoer-
denverf. in Westpreuss. (1912) 125 sqq.
48. Johanna Schopenhauer, Jugend- und Wanderb., Arth. Schopen-
hauer, Inaugural-Dissertation (1812). After the taking of Dantzig,
the Fren¢h consul there, Pons, was arrested by the Prussians (1793).
During Kosciuszko’s Revolution Parandier, the French agent with
the Polish Emigration, presented the Committee of Public Safety
a sharp memorial protesting against the leaving of Dantzig in Prussian
hands: Parandier, to the Comité de sal. publ., Paris, August 25,
1794. So too during the Directoire there exists in the Paris Archives
of Foreign Affairs a series of official pronouncements, 1795-6, against
the seizing of Dantzig by Prussia. On Bartholdy and his conspiracy,
cf. Loeschin, II, 320 sqq.
49. The flight of the Prussian Royal Family through Dantzig,
1806: vid. Hohenzollernjahrbuch, IX (1906); Bailleu in the Reports
of West Pruss. Hist., V (1906); Schippel, ibid., VII (1908). The
conquest of Dantzig by Franco-Polish troops, 1807: Napoleon to
Berthier, Vars., January 23, 1807, and the whole correspondence
with Lefebvre, bearing witness to the unusual interest of the Emperor
in Dantzig, espec. NN. 11680-1, 12593, 600, 4, 57, 707-12, Corr. de
Napoléon, XIV-V. The original state of the Polish forces besieging
Dantzig: the Northern Legion, 2148; the III Division, parts of the
2nd and 3rd regiments, 1320; in Gardanne’s Division, parts of the
2nd and 3rd regiments, 1921; in Polenz’ Division, Dziewanowski’s
horse, 423; in all not quite 6,000. Situation générale de la Grande
Armée, April 1, 1807, Mémorial du département de la guerre, VIII
(1843), 294; at the end the number was 6,500; cf. Gembarzewski,
The Army of the Duchy of Warsaw (1905), 60, 96, 144 sqq.
Dombrowski to Zajontchek, in Gniewo, April 3, 1807: ‘‘ We
here keep working our way ever nearer to Dantzig. My Poles have
the most dangerous position, and the most important. They are
fighting daily.”” Napoleon was in Marienburg, April 25th, cf. Corr.
of April 24, 26, 1807, NN. 12470, 4; it seems that he approached
Dantzig and saw Lefebvre; cf. Heinel-Berg, Aufzeichn ungen aus
120 DANTZIG AND POLAND
der Vergangenheit Marienburgs, in Reports of West Prussian Hist.
Society, XVI (1917), 5.
50. The battle of the Mouth of the Vistula (Weicselmiinde) and
the death of Parys on May 15th ; the funeral at Wonneberg, May 17th ;
the reports of General Gielgud and General Hauke from before the
city, vid. Rembowski, Coll. Writings of General Hauke (1905), 56 sqq.
The report of Gielgud to Prince Poniatowski on May 2oth, cf. Poznan
Gazette (1807), supplem. to N. 44. (The articles in this paper on
the Polish activities before Dantzig were mostly edited in Dombrow-
ski’s Headquarters, as we see from the minutes of his Staff Corre-
spondence.) Gielgud to Napoleon, Wonneberg, May 26, 1807: “La
troisiéme division polonaise que j’ai l’honneur de commander, est
arrivée au blocus de Dantzig avec 6,500 hommes présents sous les
armes .. . elle se trouve réduite aujourdhui 4 4,650 hommes présents
sous les armes. . . . Les habitants de la ville de Dantzig sont Polonais.
Ils sont animés de sentiments d’admiration et de fidélite pour V.M.1I.
et R. et d’amour pour leur ancienne patrie. Comme tout le reste de
la Pologne, ils ne se plaindront point de recevoir l’ordre de V.M.
d’habiller complétement toute la troisiéme division polonaise, qui a
aidé avec tant de zéle 4 les délivrer du joug prussien, 4 les réunir a
leur ancienne patrie... .”
51. The Surrender of Dantzig, May 26, 1807; Description of
Lefebvre’s and the Polish Army’s entry, Wolski, A Portrait of Mis-
fortunes of War, 1806-7, in Annual of the Scient. Soc. of Thorn, XVI
1909), XVIII (1911), 13 sq., 21, 34. On the rejoicing in Warsaw
at the news of Dantzig’s surrender, vid. Correspondence from Warsaw
in the Poznan Gazette, N. 45, June 1, 1807. The fine address of
Napoleon to the French Senate on May 28th, with the granting of
the title Duc de Dantzig to Lefebvre, Correspondance de Napoléon,
N. 12667. Cf. General Chlapowski, Memoirs (1899), General Weyssenhoff,
Memoirs in the Monthly Warsaw Library for 1902. One sees from these
memoirs how hard the task of the young and inadequately equipped
Polish armies was before Dantzig. The Letters of General Kosinski
from before Dantzig, in Poznan Gaz. (1807), NN. 43 sq., cf. also Sokol-
nicki, General Sokolnicki (1912), 146 sqq., setting in fair colours the
latter’s not very remarkable part in thewhole. Cf. Bennigsen, Memoirs
II, 85 sqq., 100 sqq., with the curious Dantzig reports of the Russian
Commander-in-Chief, General Kamenskoj; also Briefe ueber die
Belag. von Danzig von einem Augenzeugen (Hamb., 1807), and Duis-
burg, Gesch. der Belag. und Blok. Danz. (Danz., 1808); further Die
Belag. von Danz., 1807 (from Kalckreuth’s original papers, Posen-
Leipsic, 1809); Danz. waehrend und nach der Belag., in Briefen
(Amst.-Hamb., 1809); Plotho, Tageb. 1806-7 (Berlin, 1811) ; Saint-
Aubin, Siége de Dantz. en 1807 (Paris, 1818), 72, 97, 103, 117, 123,
126, on the Polish activities, the death of Parys, etc. Cf. Hoepfner,
Krieg von, 1806—7, III (1851), 336-529; Koehler Geschichteder Festung
Danzig, II; Lettow-Vorbeck, Krieg 1806-7, IV (1896), 194-272,
with interesting observations on the ‘‘ Bedeutung Danzigs fuer die
grossen Operationen.”’
52. Napoleon in Dantzig, June 1, 1807: the parade of the first
NOTES 121
Polish Legion on that day, the reception of the city authorities on
June 2nd, his departure the same afternoon; Mém. de la ville de
Dantz. for Napoleon, June 1, 1807. Malachowski to Napoleon, Vars.,
June 3, 1807, asking for “‘ la ville de Dantzig et toute la partie de la
Pologne qui |’avoisine.”’
53. Dantzig as Free City: the Franco-Russian Treaty, Tilsit,
July 7, 1807, §6: “la ville de Dantzig, avec un territoire de deux
lieues de rayon autour de son enceinte, sera rétablie dans son indé-
pendance, sous la protection de S.M. le roi de Prusse et de S.M. le
roi de Saxe, et gouvernée par les lois qui la régissaient 4 1’époque,
ou elle cessa de se gouverner elle-méme ” ; §8: ‘‘S.M. le roi de Prusse,
S.M. le roi de Saxe, ni la ville de Dantzig, ne pourront empécher par
aucune prohibition, ni entraver par l’établissement d’aucun péage,
droit ou impdt, de quelque nature qu’il puisse étre, la navigation
de la Vistule,’’ Martens Recueil des traités conclus par la Russie, XIII
(1902), N. 493. The Franco-Prussian Treaty, July 9th, §14: “S.M.
le roi de Prusse renonce . . . a la possession de la ville de Dantzig,”
§§ 19, 20, ut supra, 21: “la ville, port et territoire de Dantzig seront
fermés, pendant la durée de la présente guerre maritime, au commerce
et a la navigation des Anglais,” cf. the proclamation of Frederic
Wilhelm III, Memel, July 24, 1807, renouncing Dantzig. The Dantzig-
Prussian Treaty as to Boundaries, Elbing, December 6th, signed by
Dohna for Prussia and Senator Labes with his colleagues for Dantzig,
§$ 2, 4
54. The solemn restoration of the previous form of administration
in Dantzig, July 21, 1807. The Dantzig Deputation to Paris, vid.
Granier, Berichte aus der Berliner Franzosenzeit, 1807-9, Publi-
cationen aus den Preussischen Staatsarchinven, LXXXVIII (1913),
41. Its reception by Napoleon at St. Cloud, September 6, 1807,
and its return in May, 1808. The Celebration of the introduction
of the Code Napoléon in Dantzig, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame,
July 21, 1808. The city’s Memorial to Napoleon in the matter of
the War Contribution, July 15, 1808, handed in in Erfurt by a Dantzig
Deputation. A Memorial for Napoleon on July 24, 1811, set forth
the sinking of the population during four years from 64 thousand
down to 44, and the complete ruin of the trade. Many interesting
documents for the story of Dantzig in the Napoleonic period are
convened at the Parish Archives des affaires étrangéres und Archives
de la guerre, in the relations of the French Consuls to Danzig : Chopin
and Massias, and in the correspondence of General Rapp with the
Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Champagny and Maret, and Marshal
Berthier.
55. Napoleon in Dantzig again, June 7, 1812, reception of the
city authorities and the merchants on June 8th, according to eye-
witness: “‘der Kaiser im bekannten einfachen gruenen Kleide, mit
dem Hute unter dem Arme, eine Tabaksdose in der Hand, ging in
bestaendiger Begleitung Rapps, der sein Dolmetscher war, vor der
Reihe auf und nieder, blieb in einem Sprechen, Fragen, Erwidern und
Antworten, und floesste mit jeder Minute mehr eine solche Dreistigkeit
ein, dass es beinahe eine Conversation wurde, und ein jeder auch unge-
122 DANTZIG AND POLAND
fordert, sprach, was er fuer zweckmaessig hielt. . . . Er wandte sich
(immer) wieder zu den Kaufleuten und begann ein foermliches Handels-
conseil . . .”’ (a long and curious dialogue of the Emperor with the
merchants) ... (finally) ‘‘erklaerte er nach der Regierung (i.e.
turning to the Senate’s representatives), Je garderai votre ville;
je connais trop son importance. Elle est l’embouchure de la Vistule
et le débouche de la Pologne. .. .”’ Napoleon left Dantzig for the
Army, June 11, 1812.
56. As to the military state of Dantzig at the time, cf. interesting
details given by Richemont, colonel du génie, directeur des fortifica-
tions, in his Memoir sur Dantzig, 1812 (MSS. from General Hauke’s
Papers). The prophecy in the celebrated poem of Mickiewicz, “ Pan
Thaddeus,’ refers to the time of the Moscow Campaign :—-
“Long live Dantzig city !—Once our port,
‘Twill be our port again!”
Cf. the later letter of Mickiewicz to Mronga, ut supra. Cf. also for
the Napoleonic period, Danziger Zeitung, 1807-13, passim; Blech,
Gesch. der Siebenjaehrigen Leiden Danzigs, 1807—14, I (Danz., 1815) ;
and on the results of the blockade, Tarle, The Blockade of the
Continent (Petersburg, 1913). 3
57. The purposes of Russia as to the Vistula line, 1812-14:
Bernhardi, Toll, II, 366 sqq., and Gesch. Russlands, II, 735; General
Schilder, Alexander I, III, 137, 142; Pertz, Stein, III, 300; Lehmann,
Stein, III. Cf. Boyen, Erinner., II, 250, 526 sq.; Meinecke, Boyen,
I, 247; Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte, I, 423; Oncken, Befreiung-
skriege, I, 217, 257 sqq.; Osten-Sacken, Milit. Gesch. der Befreiungskr.
1813, I, 84, 163 sq.
58. The Siege of Dantzig, 1813: Blech II (1815); Tort, Le Typhus
contag. de Dantz. en 1813 (1817); Artois, Rel. de la déf. de Dantz.
(1820) ; Mém du gén. Rapp (1823—a falsification, but it includes the
siege documents of 1814); Loeschin, II (1828); Campredon, Déf.
de Dantzig en 1813, journ., notes, lettr. (1888); Auriol, Déf. de
Dantzig en 1813, Rev. hist. XL (1889) ; Koehler, II (1893); Reboul,
Camp. de 1813, I (1910), 368 sq. As to Russian espionage in Dantzig,
vid. The War for the Fatherland (Russian), V (1904), 6, 240; Langeron,
Mém. 1812-14 (1902), 170 sq., on the mission to Dantzig in January,
1813, in disguise of a Russian colonel, the famous Figner, who so
deceived Rapp, that the latter gave him letters to Napoleon—which
Figner of course handed over to the Russian Headquarters, Vid.
Wojenski, Acta, docum. and materials for War of 1882-13, I (1909),
425; cf. The Centenary of the Taking of Dantzig, in Russian War
Historical Series, II (1912), 425 (valueless). The interest of the Russian
General Staff in Dantzig is attested by the multiplicity of data and
studies about the city in the Archives of the General Staff in Petersburg,
NN. 1764, 1804-6, 2054, 2087, 2130-43, 2286-93, 4773. Anthony
Ostrowski, Biography of Thomas Ostrowski, II (1873), 402 sq. (based
on the notes made by his brother Ladislaus in Dantzig, 1813). Cf.
General Kolaczkowski, Memoirs (1899), 15. On the incident with the
NOTES 123
Russian officers in the outposts and the false proclamation, vid.
Danziger Zeitung (1813), N. 33; cf. Angeberg, Recueil (1862), 600 sqq.
The Surrender of Dantzig, November 28, 1813, signed in Langfuhr, § 6:
“les troupes polonaises ... appartenantes a la garnison, auront
une pleine et entiére liberté de suivre le sort de l’armée frangaise. . . .
Mess. les officiers polonais . : . donneront chacun leur parole d’honneur
par écrit, de ne pas servir contre les puissances alli¢es, jusqu’a leur
parfait échange.”’
59. The Russo-Prussian dispute about Dantzig: Schultze, Um
Danzig, 1813-14 (1903): Schoen, Papiere III (1881), 349, 278;
Delbrueck, Gneisenau, IV (1879), 175; Krollmann, Landwehrbriefe,
1813 (1913), 75 sq., the letters of Dohna from before Dantzig.
The instructions of Czar Alexander to D. Alopeus, his Ambassador
at the Court of Berlin, Kalish, March, 1813: ‘“‘ rétablir les anciennes
villes hanséatiques, mais d’en augmenter le nombre, en comprenant,
dans cette catégorie ... Dantzig ... (pour) servir d’étape aux
produits russes.” Vid. the Franco-Russo-Prussian truce at Pleswitz,
June 4, 1813, §§ 5-8, on communications with Dantzig. The Coalition
Convention (Russo-Prusso-Austrian) at Reichenbach on June 26,
1813, §2: ‘‘l’aggrandissement de la Prusse .. . par la cession de
la ville et du territoire de Dantzig,’’ Martens Recueil, III (1876),
N. 68, VII (1885), N. 259, XIV (1905), N. 500.
60. The action of the city and of Keidel against Dantzig’s restora-
tion to Prussia: The instructions of the Senatorial Committee of
the city (Weickhmann, Wernsdorff, Doering, Trendelenburg, Soermans),
for Keidel, Dantz., January 8, 1813. The Memorials of Keidel
for the Czar (via Laharpe), Paris, May 31st, for Castlereagh, June 1,
1814: “...S.M. Britannique n’a jamais reconnu la soumission
passagére de Dantzig au sceptre prussien, effectuée en 1793 et terminée
en 1807, de méme qu’une pareille reconnaissance n’a jamais eu lieu
dela part dela France . . ."”. Memorial for Pozzo di Borgo, July 27th,
for the English Govt., Lond., September 19, 1814; Hardenberg to
Weickhmann, Berlin, September 5th. Articles in the Morning
Chronicle about Dantzig, August 25th, 31st, September 7, 1814.
Cf. the appeal of the City of London “ for the purpose of affording
relief to the suffering inhabitants of the city of Dantzig,’’ February rst.
Panten, Danzigs Rueckkehr unter Preuss. Herrschaft, in Zeitschrift
fuer Westpruess. Gesch., XIII (1884), 98 sq.; cf. Jaucourt, Corresp.
(1905), 17 sq.; Askenazy, Europe and Poland, in Wars. Libr. (1909),
III, 51; Weil, Les dessous du Congrés de Vienne, II (1917), N. 1496;
Wawrzkowicz, England and Poland at the Congress of Vienna (1919),
3380, 383 sqq., adds to that question some new details from the
London Record Office, the Archives of Berlin and Vienna, and those
of Czartoryski.
61. The restoration of Dantzig to Prussia: Acte final du Congrés
de Vienne, June 9, 1815, §23: “‘...S.M. le roi de Prusse, ...
ses héritiers et successeurs, posséderont de nouveau, comme aupara-
vant, en toute souveraineté et propriété . . . la ville de Dantzig
et son territoire, tel qu’il a été fixé par le traité de Tilsit.’” The Prusso-
Russian Treaty of May 3, 1815, §§ 22-6, 39, 30, as to the free shipping
124 DANTZIG AND POLAND
in the boundaries of Dantzig as set in 1772, Martens, Recueil, III,
NN. 79, 81.
62. The Prussian reorganization of Dantzig: Schoen, Papiere,
passim; Askenazy, Russia—Poland (1907), 159 sq.; Schottmueller,
Die Einrichtung der Kgl. Regierung in Danzig vor 100 Jahren, Journal
of West Pruss. Hist., LVII (1917), told in a deceitful and apologetic
exposition. The misery and riots in Dantzig, Loeschin, II, 500 sq.
The trade disputes of Prussia with the Kingdom of Poland: vid.
the Prusso-Russian Trade Conventions, St. Petersburg, December 19,
1818, with the supplements, § 2, séparé et secret and table des droits
d’import. ; March 11, 1825, cf. Martens Recueil, VII, NN. 297, 308.
The Prussian Customs List of October 25, 1821, modified April 10,
1823; cf. Askenazy, Two Centuries, I, 400 sqq. In the Archives
of the Warsaw Treasury interesting fragments are preserved of the
consular correspondence of Heydeken, Makarewicz, Borakowski,
Tengoborski, from Dantzig, with the Warsaw Government, 1818—30,
including a series of projects and treatments as to the trade between
Dantzig and Poland.
63. The Kashubians: Kujot, History of Polish Prussia, I (1913),
196 sq. Kentrzynski, in the Monthly The Land (r1o9rr1), N. 22; cf. the
protest of the Kashubians against his too smooth account, which
cannot be scientifically justified, in their Review, The Griffin, IV
(1912), 76; the remarks of Romer, The Poles in the Sea-coast and Lake
Regions (1019), 8, 15 sq., are superficial and uncritical; on the
language question, cf. Baudouin-Courtenay, The Kashubian Language
and Problem, in the Journal of the Russian Ministry of Education,
V (1897), also Karlowicz, The Kashubian Dialect, in The Vistula
Journal, XII (1898), and Ramult, Dictionary of the Pomeranian or
Kashubian Language (1893). Chichkoff to Mronga, Petersb., July 16th;
Rumianzeff to Mronga, Homel, August 4, 1826, published in the Pre-
face to Mrongovius’ Complete Polish-German Dictionary (Koenigsb.,
1835), VII, XI sqq. One should, however, moderate the overdone con-
demnation of Mrongovius because of this correspondence, e.g. Matusiak,
Panslavism among the Kashubians, in the General Review (1894),
Poblocki in The Griffin, I (1908), Koscinski, The Slavonic Idea among
the Kashubians (1908). On the other hand, cf. Slaski, In Defence
of Mrongovius, The Griffin, IV, 185 sqq.; Frantzew, Polish Slavonic
Science (1906), 125. Cf.. Mrongovius to Prince Adam Czartoryski,
Dantzig, November 30, 1822; to The Warsaw Scient. Society, April
18th ; to the learned Polish historian, Maciejowski, Dantzig, Novem-
ber 1, 1831; The Griffin, IV, 314 sqq. Mickiewicz (as deputy of
Prince Czartoryski) to Mrongovius, Paris, February 28, 1852, Collected
Works, XII, 237 sqq.
64. Dantzig at the time of the November Revolution : Chtcherbatoff,
Prince Field Marshal Paskiewitch ; General Prondzynski, Memoirs,
III (1909), 29, 46 sqq. As to Dantzig after 1831, cf. Brandstaetter,
Land un Leute des Landkreises Danzig (1879), 325 sqq. The figures
as to exports, very incomplete, from 1835-38, in Radziszewski, The
Polish Bank (1910), 397, and in 1849, Makowski, The Turn-over of
the Grain Export in Dantzig, in the Warsaw Library, XXXVIII
NOTES 125
(1850), 374 sqq. The exact figures are to be had in the collection
of the Jahresberichte der Aeltesten der Kaufmannschaft der Stadt
Danzig (1847-70).
65. Dantzig at the time of the January Revolution: the speech
of Bismarck in the Prussian Chamber, February 18, 1863: ‘‘ Danzig
in preussischen Haenden zu bewahren,’”’ Reden, II, 75. Buchanan
to Russell, Berlin, February 22nd, the words of Wilhelm I, of course
inspired by Bismarck: ‘the first efforts of the new Polish State
would be to recover Dantzig, and if that attempt succeeded, the fatal
consequences to Prussia were too evident.” February 28th, March
Ist: “‘ ... the representations of the elders of the Mercantile Cor-
poration of Dantzig . . . in which special attention is called to the
injury that has accrued or might accrue to their interests in conse-
quence of the agreement with the Russian Government (i.e. the Warsaw
Convention of February 8th).’’ Confid. Corr. of the Brit. Govt.
respecting the insurr. in Poland, ed. Filipowicz (1914), NN. 70, 118,
138, On the Kashubian revolts, vid. Stella-Sawicki, The Year 1863
(1902), 103 sqq. Cf. The Griffin, III, 56.
66. Sutherland Edwards, Sir W. White, his life and corresp. (1902),
calls in question his relationship to an illustrious Polish statesman.
Cf. the Polish Review, CL (Cracow, 1903). The French Squadron
in the Gulf of Dantzig, August 21, 1870: vid. Der deutsch-franz.
Krieg, 1870-71, red. von der Kriegsgesch. Abth. des Gr. Generalst.,
I (1874), 117 sqq., II, 1317 sqq. The figures of the export of grain
from Dantzig: vid. Wasilewski, Dantzig from the point of) view of
Trade and Industry, in the Journal of Agriculture (Niwa), X (1876),
485 sq., 569sq. Exact data given in the collection Jahresberichte des
Vorsteheramts der Kaufmannschaft zu Danzig (1871-1913).
67. The speeches of Rickert and Bismarck in the German Parliament, °
May 21, 24, 1879, February 10, 16, 1885, given in Bismarck’s Reden, VII,
236, 262 sqq., X, 166, 233 sqq. Bismarck’s speeches in Varzin, Sep-
tember 16, 1894, “ ein Polenreich . . . (mit) Westpreussen, Danzig
u.s.w. (waere) stets der Bundesgenosse unsrer Feinde,” September 23,
“ , . . ich will immer lieber mit dem Zaren in Petersburg als mit der
Schlachta in Warschau zu tun haben. ... Wenn das polnische
Phantasiegemaelde verwirklicht wuerde, so waere zunaechst Danzig
in Gefahr. Die Polen muessten Dantzig annektieren,’’ Bismarck’s
Reden, XIII, 104 sqq.
68. The Kashubian Renaissance: On Floryan Ceynowa, vid.
Koscinski, The Slavonic Idea among the Kashubians (1908); The
Griffin, I (1908) ; Frantzew, The Slavonic Idea among the Kashubians,
in Russian Philological News (Warsaw, 1908), N. 4. On the con-
temporaneous Young Kashubian Movement, vid. the Polish Dantzig
Gazette and The Griffin. Curious light is thrown on the suspicious
attitude of the Prussian Government to this movement, and especially
on the Union for Kashubian Folk-origins, by the pamphlet of Cardinal
von Widdern, Polnische Eroberungszuege in Westpreussen, Ostpr.
und Pommern (1913), 33 sqq. On the number of the Kashubians,
cf. the earlier calculation of Ramult, Statistics of the Kashubian People
(1899), further the newer and reliable data in The Griffin, I, 8 (1909),
126 DANTZIG AND POLAND
229, and in the Reports of the Union for Kashubian Folk-origins,
I, 8 (1910), 226. Bernhard, Die Polenfrage (1910), gives a coloured
account of the economic movement ; Spandowski, The Polish Banks
in Pomerania, The Griffin, III (1911), an accurate one.
69. General Koehler, Gesch, der Festung Danzigs, II, 504 : ‘‘ Danzig
muss in einem Defensivkriege mit Russland den Pivotpunkt abgeben.”
On the problems of the Vistula and the port of Dantzig : Keller, Memel- -
Pregel und Weichselstrom, I (1899-1900), 348 sq., IV. 289, 453 sqq.;
Piechowski, The Vistula as a Highway of Communication and Trade
(1905), in Warsaw Economist (1905), IV; Reyman, Die Weichsel
als Wasserstrasse (1913), 49 sqq.; Ingarden, Waterways (1916),
29 sqq.; Matakiewicz, Polish Waterways (1917), 12 sqq. ; Sadkowski,
Unsere zukiinftigen Wasserstrassen (1918), 27 sq.; Czernecki, The
Organization of Internal Polish Trade (1918), 64 sqq. (without value).
70. The economic situation and the present-day turnovers of
Dantzig : Rueckgang des Dantziger Handels, in Danz. Ztg. (October,
1903); Beyer, Der Danziger Warenhandel (1904); Uhlmann, Der
Deutsch-Russische Holzhandel (1905), 70 sqq.; Muensterberg, Der
Handel Danzigs (1906), 27 sqq., showing the persecution of Prussia
from the railway side. Cf. Spandowski, The Condition of the Artizan
in West Prussia, 1897-1907, in the Annual of the Scient. Soc. in
Thorn, XV (1908), 130 sqq.; Fehrmann, Danzigs Handel und In-
dustrie (1912), 8, 14, 18 sqq.; Statist. Jahrb. deutscher Staedte,
XVIII (1912), 144; Stam, Dantzig as Poland’s Chief Port (1918).
Vid. the report of the office of the chairman of the Merchants of
Dantzig for 1908 for the preference given to Stettin to the disadvantage
of Dantzig’s trade with Poland. Ibid. for 1912, p. 7: “die Schiffbau-
und Maschinenindustrie in ebenso unbefriedigender Lage, wie schon
seit einer Reihe von Jahren.” Kroeker, Zur industr. Entwickl,
Danzigs (1916), 31, 35 sq., confirms the weak growth of the chief
branches of Dantzig’s industry, “‘ because the largest manufacturing
plants of the city are state factories, whose amount of production
depends not on economic development, but on political considerations.”
On the City’s Population, vid. Preussisches Gemeindelexicon, II (1912) ;
Stat. Jahrbuch fuer das Deutsche Reich, XXXVI (1915).
71. Copy, Foreign Office (Herr Solf): The following telegram,
received from the Imperial Ambassador in Berne (Baron Romberg),
on October 20th, is herewith brought to the attention of the IngPerial
Ministry of the Interior: ‘‘ Mir wird aus zuverlaessiger Quelle mitge-
teilt, dass sich die Danziger Kaufleute nach Warschau an Polnische
Regierung gewandt und Wunsch ausgesprochen haetten, Danzig
moechte zu Polen kommen, da man sich fuer Danzigs Zukunft Gutes
vom Koenigreich Polen als Hinterland verspraeche.” ‘‘ See to it
that inquiries are made as to the correctness of the report, Berlin,
October 21, 1918.”” ‘‘ The Secretary of State for the Interior, Berlin,
W. 8, October 27, 1918, Wilhelmstr., 74. Sent Copy to the Chief of
the Administration in the General Government of Warsaw (Herr
Steinmeister), with request for a statement in the matter.” ‘‘ The
Chief of the Administration of the Gen. Govt. in Warsaw, October 30,
1918, sends this (i) to the Government Commissioner (Prince Oettingen),
NOTES : 127
and (ii) to the Central Police Station (Herr von Born-Fallois), with
_ the request for news, as to whether anything is known of such a step
' on the part of Dantzig merchants toward the Polish Government.”’
| 72. Administrative oppression in Dantzig: Clara D., to Max D.,
_ Dantz., November 8, 1918: “*. . . Hier tut sich was. Das Volk
-. wird verrueckt mit ihren Polen und Deutschen. . . . In den koeni-
glichen Betreiben sind Listen umhergegangen, wer sich zu Polen
; * oder Deutschland bekennt: wer Pole werden will, wird sofort entlas-
sen.”’ On the elections to the German Parliament, January 19, 19109,
' out of over 90,000 votes cast in Dantzig, the Deutschnationale got
_. about 14,000.
if 73. The troubles of the present Prussian Govt. in the matter of
Dantzig have been increased by the formal abolition by the Russian
Soviets-Govt. of all the Treaties of the Partitions of Poland, and
among them the second one in 1793, which gave Dantzig to Prussia :
“The empowered Representation of the Russian Socialist Federative
Soviets-Republic has the honour to draw the attention of the Imperial
German Govt. to the fact, that the said Russian Administration has
decided in the Council of the People’s Commissioners (in view of and
' in keeping with art. 4 of the Russian-German supplementary treaty
. tothe Peace of Brest, March 3, 1918), to report to the Imperial German
Govt. as follows : that the treaties, agreements and settlements herein
noted, are in the opinion of the Govt. of the Soviets-Republic con-
trary to the changes which the war has brought with it... (then
comes a list of various Russian treaties with different States of the
German Empire).... At the same time the said Govt. of the Soviets-
Republic’ has decided in its Council of People’s Commissioners, on
the basis of the same art. 4, to abolish all the treaties and acta, agreed
upon between the Govt. of the one-time Russian Empire and that
of the Kingdom of Prussia in regard to the Partition of Poland, since
they stand contrary to the principle of self-determination of nations
and the revolutionary consciousness of right of the Russian people,
which has recognized the irrevocable right of the Polish people to
independence and unity. This involves the following treaties and
acta: 1. The secret Treaty for the Partition of Poland, January 4,
1772. 2. The St. Petersburg Treaty for the First Partition of Poland,
July 25, 1772. 3. The Declaration of Prussia as to her rights and
claizzs on Poland, September 1, 1772, reported to the Representatives
of Foreign Govts. in Warsaw by the Note of the Polish Minister of
Foreign Affairs, September 22, 1772. 4. The Treaty between Russia
and Prussia, January 23, 1793, for the Second Partition of Poland.
5. The Agreement for the Third Partition of Poland made in St.
Petersburg, October 13-24, 1795. 6. The Boundary Settlement of
Poland, made in Grodno June 21-July 2, 1796, together with a
secret description of the boundaries. 7. The Agreement of October
10-21, 1796, as to the interpretation of art. 3 of the Treaty of October
13-24, 1795, as regards the boundaries of Cracow. 8. The Treaty
about Polish matter of January 15-26, 1797. 9. The Vienna Treaty
of April 21-May 3, 1815, about the Duchy of Warsaw. 10. The
Treaty of Berlin of October 30-November 11, 1817, about the
128 DANTZIG AND POLAND
boundaries of the Kingdom of Poland, with additional agreements.
11. The Minutes belonging to the same of November 7-19, 1817.
12. The Final Boundary Settlement between the Kingdom of Poland
and the Prussian States, April 12-24, 1823. 13. The Treaty of
October 4-16, 1833, on the common dealing with Polish questions.
The Govt. of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviets-Republic has
further decided on the basis of the said art. 4, not to let any of the
secret treaties, agreements, or settlements made by the Govt. of the
one-time Russian Empire with the Govt. of the German Empire or
its allied States come again into force, since they stand contrary to
the Decree of the Commissioners of the People of October 28, 1917,
“On Peace.”
The German Imperial Chancellor’s Office to Gen. Govr. von Beseler,
Berlin, September 30, 1918:
‘“‘ E, Exz. beehre ich mich, Abschrift einer Verbalnote der hiesigen
russischen Vertretung zu uebersenden, in der diejenigen Vertraege
aufgefuehrt sind, die nach Ansicht der Sowiets-Republik nicht wieder
in Kraft treten sollten. Die auf Seite 5-7 aufgefuehrten Vertraege
betreffen die Teilung Polens. Diese Dokumente sind nie veroeffent-
licht worden (this strange statement proves an astonishing ignorance
of the Berlin Chancellor’s Office, as all the acta mentioned above
which have to do with the Partitions of Poland are known to have
been published long since) und koennen daher nur im Geheimen-
Staatsarchiv eingesehen werden. Praktische Bedeutung haben diese
Vetraege fuer die Gegenwart kaum mehr. Es wuerden daher dies-
seits keine Bedenken bestehen, dem Wunsche dem russischen Regierung
zu entsprechen. E, Exz. waere ich fuer baldfaellige Mitteilung
dankbar, ob etwa von seiten des kaiserlichen General-Gouvernements
oder der polnischen Regierung auf eine wieder-in-Kraftsetzung
einzelner Bestimmungen der Vertraege Wert gelegt wird.”’
“Copy respectfully sent to the Imperial Legation Secretary in
Warsaw, Prince Oettingen, for his perusal. Berlin, September 30,
1918.”” In the margin: ‘“‘ At this moment the abolishing of the
Treaties of Partition, a fact which would soon get to be known,
would only serve to kindle the agitation as to Posen.—Graf.
Lerchenfeld.”’
INDEX
Adalbert, St., 103
Alexander I of Russia, 23, 64, 65-68,
7°, 73-74, 75-76, 82-83, 122
Alexander Jagiellon, 28, 108
Alfred the Great, 103
Alopeus, 123
Anderson, 39
Anna of Russia, 25, 26, 38, 75, 115
Anne, Queen, 37
Artois, 122
August II, 23, 28
August III, 24, 26-31 #.
Augusta of Prussia, 89
Bandtkie, 113
Barth, 44
Bartholdy, 55
Benningsen, 120
Benoit, 41
Berthier, 119
Beseler, 128
Bielski, 111
Bismarck, 88, 92-94
Blech, 122
Boleslaw the Great, 7
Bolognetto, 111
Borakowski, 124
Born-Fallois, 127
Boucicaut, 14, 108
Bouet-Willaumez, 92
Boyen, 68
Brihl, 115
Briineck, 49
‘Buchanan, 88, 125
Bukaty, 38, 116
Biilow, General, 58
Bilow, Bernard, Chancellor, 94, 99
Bulhakow, 46
Burke, 38
Buturlin, 31
Canaparius, 103
Caro, 9, 104-107
Carolus Gustavus, 19, 20, II2
Carrew, 37
Casimir Jagiellon, 12, 14, 18, 28,
107, 114
Castlereagh, 74, 76, 78, 123
Catherine II, 33-45, 49, 75
Cellarius, 113
Ceynowa, 87-94, 125
Charles II, 37
Charles V, 15
Charles XII, 22
Chlapowski, 120
Chodowiecki, 28, 113
Chwalkowski, 112
Chytraeus, 105
Clement V, Pope, 104
Constantine, Grand Duke, 85
Correy, 115
Croy-Arsehot, 21
Curicke, J. R., 103
Curicke, R., 103, 105, 109
Czacki, 111, 113, 117
Czartoryski, A., 76-78, 86
Czartoryski, the Princes, 123
Damus, 115, 116, 118
Dantiscus (see Hoeffen)
Derby (see Henry IV), 14, 108
Derdowski, 95
Dlugosz, 8, 104
Dogiel, 106, 107
Dombrowski, H., General, 48, 55-59,
119
Dohna, 69, 73, 120
Doéring, 123
Downarowicz, 60
Duisburg, 119
Dumont, 112
Dzenghis Khan, 9
Dziewanowski, 58, 119
Eleonore, Queen, 28
Elizabeth, Queen, 37
Elizabeth of Russia, 23, 30, 38, 68,
73, 79; 114
Eugene III, Pope, 7
Fabricius, 21
Fahrenheit, 28
Figner, 122
Fiszer, 47-48
Flotwell, 80
Francis I, 15
Y 129
130
Frederic I, 32
Frederic II, 29-38, 75, 97
Frederic August, 119
Frederic William, the Great Elector,
32
Frederic William I, 32
Frederic William II, 40-45, 49, 50,
55, III, 117, 119
Frederic William III, 55, 59, 68, 87,
I2I, 123
Frederic William IV, 87
Frederic William, the Crown Prince,
96
Freislich, 113
Gardanne, 119
Gardiner, 91
Garnier, 50
George III, 76
Geret, 116
Gibson, Alexander, 115
Gibson, Arch., 115
Gielgud, 59-63, I19
Gneisenau, 123
Golizyn, 39
Gordon, 115
Grabowski, 65
Gralath, 41, 42, 104, 117
Gross, Anne, II
Gross, B., 11
Guiberts, the, 96
Gunning, 39
Gustavus Adolphus, 19, 112
Gvagninus, III
Hailes, 45, 46, 116
Hake, 73
Hardenberg, 78, 122
Hauke, 119
Hecht, 11
Helbig, 65
Henning, 118
Henry III, Valois, 28
Henry IV, 14, 108
Hertzberg, 41, 43, 45
Hevelius, 28, 112
Heydeken, 124
Hirsch, 8, 15, 104
Hoeffen, Dantiscus, 7, 28, 104, 112
Hohenzollerns, the, 32, 43, 60
Hosius, 109
Jakubowski, 114
James I, 37
an Casimir, 19-21, 28, 88, 112
an Albert, 28
Jan III, Sobieski, 22, 28, 65, 112
Jantzen, 116
Jaucourt, 122
Jeffries, 115
Jonas, 109
DANTZIG AND POLAND
Junck, 35
Kahlen, 46, 65, 75
Kalckreuth, 58, 61, 119
Kamenskoj, 58
Karnkowski, 106, 107
Keidel, 75-77, 123
Klonowicz, 17, 109
Kochanowski, IIo
Kohler, 9, 104
Kolaczkowski, 122
Korycinski, 22, 112
Kosciuszko, 47, 119
Kosinski, 58, 120
Krockow, 61
Kromer, 108
Krukowiecki, 61
Kruszynski, 114
Kutuzow, 67, 77
Labes, 121
Laboureur, 113
Laharpe, 75, 123
Langeron, 122
Lannes, 59
Lefebvre, 58-59, 62-63, I19 .
Lengnich, 27, 28, 103, 113, IT5
Leopold II, 48, 117
Lerchenfeld, 128
Letczkow, II, 53, 114
Lettow-Vorbeck, 63
Lewis, 68, 71
Lindenowsky, 50
Liverpool, Lord, 78
Lojko, 111
Léschin, 103, 105, 114, 115-122
Louis XIV, 36
Louis XV, 25
Louisa, Queen of Prussia, 55
Lubecki, 82
Lucchesini, 45
Maciejowski, 124
Makarewicz, 70, 124
Maltzan, 38, I15
Malachowski, 64, 121
Maria Gonzaga, Queen of Poland, 112
Maria Theresa, 115
Massias, 65
Metternich, 76
Meyer, 22
Michel Wisniowiecki, 28
Mickiewicz, 86, 122, 124
Mizler-Kolof, 111, 113
Mortier, 58
Mraga-Mrongovius, 85, 86, 122, 124
Miinnich, 25, 38, 87
Napoleon I, 58, 59, 64-66, 70-72,
80-82, 119-122
Nicolas I, 86, 87
INDEX
Niedermayer, 47
Niemcewicz, 112
Oettingen, 128
Oginski, 117
Opalinski, 110
Orlow, 39
Ostrowski, T., 71, 122
Ostrowski, W., 122
Paleske, 77
Parandier, 119
Parys, 61, 120
Paskiewicz, 86
Paulucci, 68
Peter the Great, 23, 30, 39, 73, 77,
112
Pitt the Elder, 38
Pitt the Younger, 45, I17
Platow, 68, 71
Plauen, Count, 11
uen, Reuss H., Commander, 11,
10
Plélo, 25
Plinius, 103
Plotho, 120
Plotzke, 105
Polenz, 119
Pomponius Mela, 103
Poniatowski, Prince J., 47, 65, 71, 119
Pons, 119
Pozzo di Borgo, 76, 123
Prondzynski, 86, 124
Przybylski, 60
Ptolemy, 103
Rachmanow, 73 .
Radziwill, M., 58, 71, 72
Rapp, 64, 71-72, 77, 122
Raumer, 51, 52
Reichardt, 41
Richemont, 122
Richter, Deacon, 55
Richter, Deputy, 44
Rickert, 92-93
Robinson, 37, 115
Romberg, 101
Rudawski, 112
Riidiger, 68
Rumianzew, 67, 85, 124
Russell, 125
Saint Aubin, 120
Saldern, 39
Sapieha, 62
Sarnicki, 111
Sawicki-Stella, 89, 125
Schilder, 67
Schiller, 47
Schleinitz, 118
Schoen, 80, 83, 123
131
Schopenhauer, A., 41, 55, 119
Schopenhauer, Jane, 41,°55, 119
Schopenhauers, the, 55
Schultze, 72
Schuppelius, 47
Schutzius, 12
Séguf, 115
Shichkoff, 86
Siegfried v. Feuchtwangen, 9
Sierakowski, 77, 78
Sigmund I, of Poland, 28
Sigmund III, 28
Sigmund Augustus, 28
Soermans, 123
Sokolnicki, 58, 120
Sokolowski, 118
Solf, ror, 126
Solikowski, r1ro
Solly, 77
Solms, 39
Soult, 64
Stadion, 76
Stanislaw Leszczynski of Poland, 23-
26, 32, 47, 86, 113
Stanislaw Augustus Poniatowski of
Poland, 38, 42, 52, 115, 117, 118
Staszic, 46, 117
Stein, 122
Steinbock, 113
Steinmeister, 126
Stephen Batory, 17, 18, 28, 109
Stuart, 76
Suffolk, 38, 39, 116
Sulkowski, 60
Tacitus, 103
Tchernyshew, A., 68
Tchernyshew, Z., 31
Tengoborski, 124
Tikhon, 31
Titius, 30
Tort, 122 ‘
Trefurt, 65
Trendelenburg, 123
Vegesack, 65
Voltaire, 35
Warner, 104
Weickhmann, 78, 123
Weiss, 29
Wernsdorff, 30, 114, 123
Weyssenhoff, 120
White, 91, 125
Willebrandt, 39
William I, 89, 96, 125
William II, 9, 96, 104
Williams, 38
Wittgenstein, 68
132 DANTZIG AND POLAND
Wladislaw IV, 28, 112 Woyczynski, 65
Wladislaw Jagiello, 10, 11, 27, 106, Wulfstan, 104
IItr Wiirtemberg, Prince A., 69, 72, 73
Wladislaw Lokietek, 7, 104
Wolkonski, 73
Wolski, 120 Zajontchek, 119
Woroncow, 31, 115 Zaluski, 112
Woroncows, the, 115 Zamoyski, 97
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